Ball Wide Mouth Pint 16-Ounce Glass Mason Jars with Lids (2-Pack)

The Mason Jar That Started It All

When people picture a mason jar, this is the jar they picture.

The Ball wide mouth pint is the American canning classic, made in the USA by a brand that has been preserving food for over 125 years, and this is the two-jar pack in the everyday 16-ounce pint size. For a microplastic-free kitchen the appeal is simple: it is BPA-free glass with a metal lid, so your food sits against inert glass, not plastic, whether you are canning jam, fermenting, storing dry goods, prepping overnight oats, or just drinking from it. The wide mouth makes filling, scooping, and cleaning easy, and the jars move effortlessly from canning pot to fridge to table.

The closure is the classic two-piece system: a flat metal lid that seals against the rim, held down by a metal screw band. Together they create the airtight seal that made home canning possible, and because the lid is metal rather than plastic, there is no plastic lid sitting over your food.

True Shift Score: 8.4 / 10

This is our own assessment, not a lab result or a certification.

It scores high as the trusted, made-in-USA, BPA-free glass jar that does nearly everything, canning, fermenting, storing, serving, with your food sitting on glass and a metal lid rather than plastic. It sits just below the all-glass and glass-lid jars on our material-purity scale for honest reasons: the flat lid seals with a thin BPA-free compound that wears with repeated tight sealing, and the metal lids and bands can rust over time. For a versatile, affordable, plastic-light mason jar, it is an excellent choice.

The Honest Tradeoffs

A few honest points about the lids, since that is where the nuance lives.

1. The flat lid seals using a thin BPA-free sealing compound around its edge, the rubbery ring that presses against the glass rim. 

2. That compound is what wears over time: with repeated tight sealing the patch can lose its grip after a few months of heavy use, which is why the flat lids are considered single-use for canning, though they are perfectly reusable for everyday dry and fridge storage. 

3. The metal lids and bands can also rust over time, especially if stored damp. 

4. None of this is unusual, it is simply how a two-piece mason lid works, and replacement lids and bands are inexpensive and everywhere. 

5. If you want a seal with no coating at all, an all-glass or glass-lid jar is the alternative, at the cost of the canning ability.

How We Evaluate Food Storage

We look at four things, and none is a lab score:

1. Whether the food-contact surface is inert and won't leach

2. Stain, or hold odors, what the lid is actually made of, since that is where plastic hides in most "glass" storage

3. How well it seals and holds up across the fridge, freezer, microwave, and dishwasher, 

4. And how durable it is over years of use. 

The real shift in food storage is getting your food off plastic and onto glass.