I recently gave up eating takeout every night, but I’m too lazy to cook, which led to me replacing it with basically nothing but canned food. Like I’ll mix a can of beans and a can of mixed vegetables together, put half in a bowl and put the other half in a container for tomorrow, put salad dressing on it, and then that’s my dinner. I also eat a half can of fruit per day, because I found the shelf life and inconsistencies with produce to be too annoying.
On the one hand, I think I’m eating better than I was when I was doing nothing but takeout. My salt consumption has plummeted, and in general, I think the nutritional facts for my canned meal are better across the board than the takeout meals I was doing.
On the other hand, if there’s some long term issue with eating too much canned food, then I’m definitely going to be affected by it. I was thinking cats lead pretty good lives with nothing but canned food, so maybe I’ll be ok.
Anyway, am I going to die a horrible canned food death, or am I ok?
Canned fruits are often placed in a ton of syrup and sugar. So they aren’t all that great for you. Even if you don’t drink the syrup.
Canned vegetables on the other hand are perfectly fine and no different from frozen vegetables. There are rarely preservatives added since the heat and vacuum is enough to keep them from spoiling.
It’s important to buy just vegetables. If you buy pre-made canned food then the quality drops significantly due to the amount of sugar, salt, and fats added. So canned peas are fine, canned pea soup not so much.
Canned vegetables have a worse reputation than deserved and it mostly comes from taste rather than health issues.
But mixing up your diet is never a bad idea. So instead of just going canned goods you can consider dried goods. Dried fruits don’t have the same issue as canned fruits while still having a long shelf life. There are dried apple or banana chips, dried plums, mangos, apricots, also nuts and seeds are great alternatives.
And even dried vegetables are an option. They require a little bit more planning because some of them need to be soaked over night. And beans usually need to be cooked in addition to the soaking as they are poisonous otherwise. But not all dried vegetables need soaking, lentils can be cooked immediately. And offers, such as dried peas can even be eaten as snack in dried form.
Haha yeah, the canned fruit is loaded with sugar from that extra syrup they add. I’ve been rationalizing it as at least I’m not drinking soda anymore, but I need to fix that too.
This is great info, though. Dried fruit is a good idea about ditching that sugary syrup. Plus, it’s easier than canned fruit anyway. I have been avoiding the premixed canned stuff and I do eat a lot of nuts and seeds, but I don’t do any dried vegetables. I’ll start looking into trying those. They do sound like they’d be a good way to get more variety.
With some dried fruits you just need to be a bit careful as they can really speed up your digestive system if you eat too many of them. Dried plums and apricots are the main culprits for me. They are so delicious and I could eat 10 or more in one go. Treat them as fresh fruit and eat 1-3 at a time and you will be fine.
Also get non sulfured variants. They don’t look as nice and don’t last as long but the taste is so much better.
no different from frozen vegetables
Canning frequently requires processing and heating. These have consequences for some vitamin levels, so they’re not exactly the same. Vitamin C is one of the bigger losses in canned food, often 60% or more because it hates oxygen and heat. Frozen fruit and vegetables are typically better for that reason, but canned is still fine if you account for it and your cans are also BPA free.
Assuming both canned and frozen foods are manufactured in ideal circumstances otherwise.
Canned veggies often have a lot of salt in them which is the main issue with them healthwise. Canned fruits you can reduce the sugar content by draining the liquid and washing them gently with tap water but like most fruits, theres still going to be a fair amount of sugar in them even if you manage to remove the sugars added to canned fruits.
Theoretically canned food is fine, if you account for nutritional loss during canning process (vit c hates heat, some other vitamins too) and ingredients added (sugar and salt content can be huge).
There is one practical problem with canned food I didn’t see anyone mention. Bisphenol A or BPA consumption can have neurological consequences in diets with a lot of tinned food. Most manufacturers now (location dependent) use BPA-free cans, but not all.
This is why I added more frozen food to my diet. Chopped Frozen broccoli, frozen spinach, peas, beans, carrots etc. Are really quick to thaw and reheat without needing much time and can be dumped into most meals without ruining them. Split red lentils also take maybe 7 mins from dry, no soaking required.
Thanks, this thread has been highly informative for me. I now know there’s a little bit of vitamin loss from the canning process, so I should look into that.
No problem! I had the same questions for the same reasons once, so I’m just glad my research can benefit someone other than me.
Here’s a good article with more info on how processing affects food, including a list of vitamins you want to watch for, the tl;dr is water soluble vitamins (B-group and C) https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/food-processing-and-nutrition
Thankfully they’re very common and easy to compensate for. Low levels of vitamins can cascade into a bunch of different issues too, so it’s definitely something to watch.
I have bad childhood memories of being forced to eat canned vegetables but this was before flash-frozen vegetables. I refuse to eat canned green beans.
Generally, the less processing a food has the healthier it is for you. After fresh fruits/veggies flash frozen is best. Then comes canned items due to heating.
I suggest visiting c/cooking. Post your go-to recipe and ask for info on making it healthier while still easy. They may say it is already good or suggest tweaks. Either way there is lots of cooking knowledge there.
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good bot
You are probably consuming more salt then you should, but you won’t get cancer or anything like that. A good alternative would be peanut butter and white bread. You could add something like peanut butter sandwiches to reduce the amount of canned food, or could move to frozen veggies instead. But as a direct response to your question, usually canned food’s biggest issue the salt content and just being overcooked.
We’ve come a long way regarding canning and food safety, I don’t think you’ll have any issues like the crews of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus had.
tldr; a short summary about the demise of John Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition. Many of the tinned rations were poorly sealed and contaminated with lead, leading to sickness, starvation and general tragedy for all involved. (If you think that sounds interesting there’s a 10-episode AMC dramatization called The Terror, which is how I learned about it)
Steamable-in-the-bag, frozen vegetables were a game changer for me eating healthier while still being incredibly convenient.
