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?
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.