> Today, it is available in every food store, often looked down on as cheap, poor quality and low status.
> It would be of huge benefit to the safety, quality and sustainability of our food system if the snobbery surrounding canned produce could be stripped away.
Thanks for this article. I felt similarly, I "discovered" canned fish when I started working out as a great source of excellent fats and protein. They're among my favourite foods now, and I marvel at the ingenuity of making highly perishable foods last almost indefinitely in such a compact format, without requiring cooling, every time I open a can.
You probably already know this, but careful with canned tuna. Eating it daily for too long (weeks to months, judging from various anecdotes) leads to mercury poisoning. Same with non-canned tuna.
Canned sardines aren't for everyone, but I believe there is much less of a worry about heavy metal poisoning with those as they're closer to the bottom of the food chain.
Aren't they? (I mean, obviously not everyone, but I assume you mean particularly controversial like Marmite or the fermented fish products of the Nordics?) I (British) always thought 'sardines on toast' was pretty plain, standard fare. A step up from 'beans on toast' perhaps, but no less commonplace.
I'm an American who has traveled a fair bit outside the US. I'd never heard of sardines on toast until a British person made a thread about it on the cooking board on 4chan, maybe a year or so ago. I guess it's not too common in North America, at least in the stars-and-stripes part.
I also use canned fish as an easy protein source. Canned fish and canned vegetables can make the basis of an excellent, cheap diet, if, as the author says, you can get over the snobbery.
> It would be of huge benefit to the safety, quality and sustainability of our food system if the snobbery surrounding canned produce could be stripped away.
Thanks for this article. I felt similarly, I "discovered" canned fish when I started working out as a great source of excellent fats and protein. They're among my favourite foods now, and I marvel at the ingenuity of making highly perishable foods last almost indefinitely in such a compact format, without requiring cooling, every time I open a can.