Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogle Bam. Here, Let's face it, some canned vegetables are so very different from their fresh forms, think asparagus, that plenty of kids grow up swearing off otherwise delicious foods forever. So it's no surprise that canned foods have a bad rap. But the bad reputation goes
beyond just the food that comes inside those cans. It's also because of things like the growth of farmers markets in the last twenty years, and influencers like California's Alice Waters and Michael Pollen who have encouraged eating locally raised fresh foods over processed foods, and bp A linings and scary accounts of the dangers of dented cans told by well meaning grandparents. So is that bad reputation deserved? First, Let's back up and talk about canning foods as a whole.
Canning was born out of a search for convenience and efficiency. A French candy maker and chef Nicholas A. Pear develop to the process. At the end of the eighteenth century, Napoleon was offering a huge prize to anyone who could help him feed his troops. A pair's original process isn't very different from the canning methods used today. A pair put food in bottles and jars, covered them with cork
and wax, and processed the jars in boiling water. The French government paid a pair to make his process public, and that led to the first recipe book on canning. The Pair's process spread quickly. Not twenty years later, the British Navy fed soldiers the first meat, soups and vegetables that were canned in tin instead of jars. During World War Two, governments in a number of countries, including the
U S and the UK, promoted home canning. The U S printed and distributed circulars and opened thousands of canning centers to help home cooks preserve food grown in home gardens. Canning became patriotic, supplementing bland and sometimes inadequate rations. In the nineteen fifties, commercially canned and other packaged foods were
introduced as nutritious, time saving, modern convenient. A popular book, the can Opener cookbook Buy Food, editor Poppy Cannon promised readers they could open some cans and create a gourmet meal without really knowing how to cook. The recipes included roast canned chicken flombay with black cherries made with a whole canned chicken. Another meal was made of canned hamburger patties covered with fried onions and red wine, baked in
a castrole dish for twenty minutes. Canned food was promoted and seen as better than fresh, especially as industrial agriculture began to incorporate more modern fertilizers and technologies. The author of the can Opener cookbook wrote the flavor of fresh tomatoes was bad and that for real tomato flavor, you
should open a can. Fifty is years later, canned tomatoes are still an off season go to for tomato lovers and cooks, and I certainly can't deny the convenience of a can of beans already cooked and ready to go into a salad, soup, dip, or whatever other dish, no long soaking or par boiling required. From a nutrition standpoint, the canning process today is designed preserve as many nutrients
as possible. Fruits and vegetables for canning are picked at the peak of their ripeness, as opposed to some produce picked for fresh sale, which may be underripe to prevent spoilage during transport from farmed store. Crops destined for canning are grown close to packing facilities and can be processed within four hours of harvest. The heat used during canning does decrease some of the water soluble vitamins in the finished food, like vitamins B and C, and often salt
and sugar are added during the process. Experts suggest rinsing canned food to reduce some of the added sugar and salt, or buying low salt and low sugar products. And of course that heat also changes the texture of vegetables, regrettably so in the case of those canned asparagus. But that heat is a plus when it comes to food safety. The heat introduces pressure that helps seal the cans, but
it can also kill or deactivate deadly germs. Remember when we mentioned our grandparents aversions to dented or swollen cans. Those fears are based in reality. Let's talk about my face. Its scary condition botuli um. It's caused by a bacterial toxin so deadly that just a million of a graham is enough to kill the United States and other countries even explored botulism as a biological weapon during World War Two.
The bacteria that crete this toxin, clostradian batu linum, are everywhere, but people associate bauchuli ism with canned foods because the bacteria only reproduce in low oxygen environments like a poorly processed can. Today, commercial canned foods go through what's called a bochu linum cook. This is a high heat cook that dramatically lowers the chance that any Clustradiu bauchua linum spores or other organisms that can cause food born illness survive.
For the record, you should discard any can that's puffed out or swollen that's caused by germs reproducing inside of it, and it is bad news. Cans that are dented are usually fine, as long as the dent is not along the cans scenes. The most recent concern about canned foods, though,
isn't the food at all. It's the cans themselves and what they're lined with, including b p A. Over the past two decades, public attention has focused on bp A, the compound used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. In two thousand and eight, the US government's National Toxicology Program concluded that there was concern about its effects on the brains, behavior, and prostate glands of fetuses, infants, and children.
Other studies have linked BPA to cardiovascular disease, obesity, asthma, and diabetes. B p A exposure is widespread. The Centers for Disease Control found b p A and of the urine samples of more than twenty five thousand people aged six and older. B p A can leach from containers, including cans, into foods and drinks, and so plastics and
canning manufacturers have worked to develop replacement materials. The Canned Manufacturers Institute says more than of food cans today are lined with new b p A free materials such as polyesters, acrylics, and PVC. Though note that that figure just refers to food cans. It doesn't include canned drinks or bottle caps. And although replacing a known concern is great, the safety of some of those substitutes is still being researched. We spoke of Sarah Geller, a senior research and database analyst
at the Environmental Working Group. She said, we don't have a lot of data about how these materials are used because the formulas are protected by trade secrets, and even though cans with newer linings can help you avoid endocrine disruptors, they may not be good for the environment. Some materials don't degrade. If you're concerned about contamination from canned foods, Geller recommends using fresh, frozen, or dried food instead of canned, But if you simply can't get away from the convenience
of canned foods, absolutely don't eat the food in the can. Finally, be aware that some compounds, including b p A, have become such pervasive contaminants in the environment that it's getting harder to avoid. No matter what your food is packaged in, Geller said, detectable amounts of b p A may make it into otherwise b p A free cans from other sources,
including the food itself. To end on a slightly lighter note, even though food was first canned in metal cans around eighteen thirteen, it took about forty years for someone to invent a can opener, and can openers for home use didn't become popular until the eighteen sixties. Before then, you'd break out the hammer and chisel. Today's episode was written by Sean Chavis and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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