51
Is eating a lot of canned food bad?
(sopuli.xyz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
51 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26959 readers
398 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.