On March 13, 2020, the COVID pandemic had just begun to spread in the United States, and the Washington Post reported a news story about the American people rushing to buy money:
Nervous American people wearing masks and rubber gloves, crowded with major supermarkets and stores in the United States, pushing shopping baskets to reserve supplies, many cities have panicked rushes, so that you are a little surprised that most of the people buy not a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, the most popular food is two, one is frozen food, and even people fight.
The large factory of General Mills, which produces Canned Soup of Progresssso, operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just as it did before the COVID pandemic, which has 1,000 employees and is hiring to fill 50 vacant positions;
Someone had to make these cans, and the surge in demand for processed foods like canned soups and vegetables during the pandemic has spilled over into the food industry's supply chain, with metal container manufacturers having to speed up production to keep pace.
How much do foreigners like to eat canned food?
Although the above is the case of the United States, the love of canned food is not only the United States, it seems that Europeans love more, according to a report published by the "mapsofworld" website in 2017, Europe accounts for 7 of the top ten countries in the world's canned food consumption:
Sweden's annual per capita consumption of 33.4 kg ranks first, and the United Kingdom, Portugal, France and Belgium and the United States consume similarly, between 21 and 23 kg, which is also considered to be indistinguishable. According to GlobalTrademag's impact forecast, canned food will continue to grow strongly in the coming years.
Presumably, you should have found a question, why Chinese is not on it? According to the "China Canning Industry Production and Marketing Demand and Investment Forecast Analysis Report" statistics, China's canning production ranked first in the world, but the average annual consumption of Chinese cans is only 1 kg, if ranked, it is estimated to be ranked 50 outside.
According to a data released by DaxueConsulting, from 1995 to 2015, China's canned food has developed into a major canned food producer and exporter in the world, of which tomatoes, asparagus, bamboo shoots, yellow peaches, oranges and other canned foods are processed.
Why does China, which has the highest canned production, not eat canned food?
During the Napoleonic Wars, the French government had offered a reward of 12,000 francs to find a technology that could preserve food for a long time without deterioration, and in 1809, the national confectionery manufacturer and brewer Nicolas Appert invented the way to preserve food with sealed glass jars, the method was very simple, the glass jar food was filled and sealed at high temperatures, and he got this huge reward.
Appel glass cans
The principle is very simple, high temperature cooking killed microorganisms, sealed jars without external isolation, microorganisms can not enter, so its shelf life is very long, such as in 1974 in the Missouri River sunk in 1865 steamboat Bertrand found canned food tested, it turned out that after 109 years, the appearance, smell and vitamin content of food have changed, but there is no sign of microbial growth, it can still be safe to eat, but the taste is not as good as before.
In 1810, the second year of the invention of the glass can, the invention of lead-tin alloy sealed metal cans, early canned food is a luxury, because the production process is complex, and the need for manual sealing and costly, but explorers still bring these cans to the North and South Poles, because they can be eaten or heated.
The real popularization of canned food until after the 1860s, mechanized production made the cost of canned packaging greatly reduced, the use of canned food in the army began to become popular, not only cans can be directly burned and heated, and even empty cans can become cooking utensils, easy to use, almost become the standard food in the army.
The food encapsulated in the cans became more and more abundant, oysters, meat, fruits and vegetables, and the cans became cheaper and cheaper, and the First World War became the world of "Bully Beef", pork and beans, canned sausages, French beef bouguinon, French onion soup and Canned Vichisowa, and the Italian army canned wontons, spaghetti, pasta and pasta, because in the damp and dark trenches of World War I, Only canned food is food that can be stored for a long time.
In World War II, the US military and the Korean War, the US military discarded everywhere unwanted canned food for the allied troops and volunteers who were difficult to supply, the supply of the volunteer army was very difficult, and the US army was tired of eating canned food and did not take it seriously, so the capture of the SUPPLY depot of the US army was the happiest thing.
Canned food was invented during the war and "sold" to the world through war, although its extremely advantageous cost and convenience laid the status of "emergency" and convenience food, but canned food still has many problems.
The earliest was caused by contamination during the filling process, and later after the filling problem was solved, the tank entered the contaminated food, such as the most common is the lead-tin alloy used to encapsulate the can and the bisphenol A on the inner surface of the can.
In addition, for the flavor and storage time of canned food, the proportion of salt used is relatively high, so the consumption recommendation of some pickled foods is to be eaten after rinsing, and some sugar pickled foods are also high in sugar content.
The other is botulinum toxin contamination, which usually occurs in canned non-acidic foods that have not received a strong enough heat treatment, and the spores have the ability to fight heat treatment, and botulism is severe, which can lead to paralysis or even fatality.
Of course, these problems in modern cans have been partially solved or have been fully solved, the world's leading canned food manufacturing companies such as Heinz Nestle and Danish Crown and Del Monte and other companies have improved the material and packaging technology of cans, but also innovated the food sterilization process, many problems have ceased to exist, such as lead pollution and bisphenol A pollution, according to 2018 data, 90% of cans no longer contain BPA pollution.
Why don't Chinese eat canned food?
Canned from the Chinese recipes, from the early luxury food to the current rare, mainly the evolution of the concept, experienced the reform and opening up of the Chinese people, from food has evolved from full to eat well, and green pollution-free, fresh has become synonymous with nutrition, canned food in everyone's impression is a kind of food that lacks nutrition after high temperature cooking, and also adds a lot of preservatives.
For such food, the vast majority of Chinese people are respectful, there are fresh fruits and vegetables when never eat canned, even as emergency food is a large number of procurement of instant noodles and noodles, rice noodles or rice and oil and other emergency, whenever the flood rescue period condolences are also these storage of daily food, if you send canned, it is estimated to be disliked by everyone.
Of course, the other is the habit, just like foreigners like boiled, fried such rough and simple food, and the Chinese people like to fry and fry the exquisite cooking skills, this can be eaten with the lid open or simply heated, the impression is emergency food, have to eat, daily meals can not think of eating canned.
Perception of canning: Most of it is wrong
For example, one of the biggest misconceptions is that preservatives are high, but there is a very interesting fact that canned food was invented much earlier than preservatives (except for salt), because food cooked at high temperatures does not have microorganisms that do not decay, so there is no need for preservatives.
Although modern canned food contains preservatives, the content is the lowest of all packaged foods, for the simple reason that the canned food itself has a long shelf life and requires little or only a small amount of preservatives.
The other is nutrition, canned food processing technology is not only high-temperature cooking, but also pasteurization, such as general canned meat and canned seafood processing temperature will not exceed about 120 ° C; vegetables, fruit canned processing temperature will not exceed 100 ° C; and our daily home cooking temperature is easy to exceed 200 ° C.
Another perception is that canned food may use rotten and spoiled food, such as rotten fruit kicking out rotten parts as canned, which is completely wrong, because the cost is much higher than the use of fresh fruit to make canned, and the canned fruit is of high quality.
For example, you are more worried about vitamin C, which is easily destroyed during the heating process, but only 10% of the treated canned yellow peaches are lost (most of the loss is water-soluble vitamins), and the canned yellow peaches may lose more than 30% after being placed.
However, there is a condition that cannot be changed, canned food is the same taste, it is difficult to compete with the food cooked on the spot, such as canned yellow peach is not as good as fresh yellow peach, and canned oranges are not as good as fresh oranges, but I don't know if you have found that the orange network of canned oranges is not, and we always hate this layer of white orange network when eating oranges.
So you may wish to abandon prejudice and occasionally try to put down cans, or as a "strategic" reserve, to increase the ability of households to cope with climate events.