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?
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.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !cooking@lemmy.world
Humble can of plain chopped tomatoes is the one thing that keeps my diet interesting and relatively nutritious. It’s the base of my little cooking framework that allows my lazy ass to eat warm meals on a quasi regular basis.
The only fresh produce you need are onions, but you can buy a lot of them at once and they won’t spoil too quickly. Just brown chopped onions on olive or vegetable oil, pour a can of tomatoes, add salt, pepper and some italian style dried herbs and you have the most basic pasta sauce that took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to make and you have sth for dinner for the next 2-4 days depending on the size of the can. But its true strength comes from its versatility. You can add any random thing you have in your pantry and it still tastes good. You have broccoli in your freezer? Just add it and wait until its soft. Same with anything else frozen. Everything canned goes as well: green peas, corn, string beans, chickpeas, beans… Want something heavier? Add fried minced pork or beef. You can also poach eggs in that sauce. Want to keep it vegan? Fried or baked tofu. Frozen or dried mushrooms? Of course! If you are not sure about some ingredient just add it anyway. It will still taste like a tomato sauce. It only tastes better with fresh produce but you can keep it 100% canned + that inital onion and it’s still a solid option that keeps your morale high and your body nourished enough to avoid unnecessary long term problems. Just keep it simple and it’s foolproof.
As far as safety of canned food is concerned, I haven’t seen any hard evidence against it. It’s not a new thing. If it was fundamentally harmful we would already know about it. Just don’t exclusively eat readymade canned meals or WW1 western front rations.
Also mandatory reddit lemmy style sorry for bad english.
There was a time when I tried getting into cooking (mostly variations of rice and beans) and I ended up leaning pretty heavily on canned chopped/diced tomatoes too. I liked the different flavors you could buy, in terms of the seasoning that’s put in the can, and you’re right, you could put anything in it and it would taste good.
Steamable-in-the-bag, frozen vegetables were a game changer for me eating healthier while still being incredibly convenient.
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)
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.
