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?
Steamable-in-the-bag, frozen vegetables were a game changer for me eating healthier while still being incredibly convenient.
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.
I forgot to mention that I also eat a sandwich or something with the canned food meal. Like peanut butter and jelly or something. And about the salt content, I rinse both the beans and vegetables off before I mix them. I’m pretty sure there’s little to no salt left at that point, because I don’t taste any.
Fair enough. If you do want some easy suggestions for meals, here is one of my go to’s (I’m also lazy and only cook one decent meal a week really so I have a lot of things like this that takes about 5 mins start to finish.)
Mexican Street Corn in a Cup. INGREDIENTS 1 Package of Steam In Bag Yellow Whole Kernel Corn. 1/2 TSP Salt 1/2 TSP Pepper 1/4 TSP Sugar 1/2 TSP Chili Powder 1/4 TSP Or To Taste - Cheyenne Pepper 2-4 TBSP Good Quality Mayo 1 TSP Lime Juice 1 TBSP finely shredded Cotija cheese (Can sub Parm but won’t be exact) 1 TBSP finely chopped Cilantro (Optional)
INSTRUCTIONS Cook corn as instructed.
While corn cooks, combine rest of the ingredients.
When corn is done, combine with mayo and cheese mix and make sure corn gets well coated. Eat it hot.
Cool, thanks for the recipe!
No, canned food is perfectly healthy, there are no short or long term consequences from eating a heavily canned diet.
Depends on the canned food.
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.
Frozen vegetables and frozen fruit in smoothies are considerable replacements. Alternatives include looking into sandwiches or wraps using stuff you can reasonably expect to consume in a reasonable amount of time. Could also consider throwing stuff into the oven (oven roasted root vegetables or broccoli/cauliflower and a rice cooker can make a decent meal with very little active cooking and more just watching the clock).
A pressure cooker is also a nice idea along that vein (dump everything in, leave it and come back to some chilli in a few hours).
Thanks for the alternatives ideas. I should try to mix up my “cooking” game a little, just to get a little more variety in my diet.
I’m 100% sympathetic to the “I want to not eat out but it’s a chore to cook”.
Ovens, pressure cookers, and rice cookers are absolutely wonderful because of how set and check back later they are.
Dressing up even simple foods like ramen with blanched leafy vegetables, poached eggs and some ham is fun.
Furikake is a great way to add a bit of flavoring to white rice. Alternatively some soy sauce and sesame oil are both good pairings for rice and ramen as appropriate.
Wraps can be fun too and may be a nice alternative to bread.
Ramen toppings is one of the only things that saved my sanity in college. I used to poach an egg in the broth while the noodles cooked. Added sushi nori cut into strips, frozen precooked shrimp, frozen corn or peas, and sweet chili sauce where a lot of my faves. Hmm… I wonder if I have any ramen in the cupboard now?
I would definitely consider frozen veggies as an alternative to canned veggies. To keep things as simple as possible, you can microwave them and they are ready in under 2 minutes. They taste significantly more fresh, and have way less salt content.
If you are looking for other options with long shelf life, pickled/lacto fermented mixed veggies could also be a great option!
I would definitely consider frozen veggies as an alternative to canned veggies. To keep things as simple as possible, you can microwave them and they are ready in under 2 minutes. They taste significantly more fresh, and have way less salt content.
If you are looking for other options with long shelf life, pickled/lacto fermented mixed veggies could also be a great option!
Thanks! Yeah, I’ll start trying to introduce frozen veggies into my routine. Never considered the pickled section of the grocery store, but I’ll take a look there too.
Microplastics are a concern, if you’re eating out of metal cans rather than glass. However there are microplastics in rainwater now, so it’s not like you can avoid them…
Yeah, that’s the type of thing I was wondering about. Some weird chemical type thing or something that does damage over time. I haven’t been worrying about it too much, but figured I should probably at least check before I knock too many canned meals back.
And yeah, this is metal cans I’m talking about.
For the microplastics, I guess I’m not too concerned with this if I can’t avoid them anyway.
Canned food will give you a lot more gas.
It usually has higher sodium than fresh/frozen options. Frequently other things as well (especially canned “dinners” or fruit.)
I’m more concerned about the apparent lack of variety. Animal protein is basically complete. Vegetable protein isn’t and you need to mix up types of veggie protein, as well as micros from an apparent lack of fruit.
Also, the lack of variation in general. I’m reminded of a guy I know who had low-t. Started eating “simple” like this and eventually got to the point where he was just eating. Bread with mayo (and subsequently went to the doctor because of lack of nutrition. And he was nagged into that- no motivation.) not a doctor… but…
