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A 5 - Minute Read
Many preppers and life hackers ask, “What is meant by canning food and why do they call it canning?”
Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container (jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, although under specific circumstances, it can be much longer. A freeze-dried canned product, such as canned dried lentils, could last as long as 30 years in an edible state.
Now that autumn is here in the North East of North America, small farmers and home gardeners, have an abundance of fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs to be stored for future use. Canning is one of the lowest cost, most effective, and most efficient ways to do this.
How effective is canning for storing food for the long term? In 1974, samples of canned food from the wreck of the Bertrand, a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1865, were tested by the National Food Processors Association. Although appearance, smell, and vitamin content had deteriorated, there was no trace of microbial growth and the 109-year-old food was determined to be still safe to eat.
What is the Process of Canning Foods?
During the first years of the Napoleonic Wars, the French government offered a hefty cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food. The larger armies of the period required increased and regular supplies of quality food. Limited food availability was among the factors limiting military campaigns to the summer and autumn months. In 1809, Nicolas Appert, a French confectioner and brewer, observed that food cooked inside a jar did not spoil unless the seals leaked, and developed a method of sealing food in glass jars. Appert was awarded the prize in 1810 by Count Montelivert, a French minister of the interior. The reason for the lack of spoilage was unknown at the time since it would be another 50 years before Louis Pasteur demonstrated the role of microbes in food spoilage.
The French Army began experimenting with issuing canned foods to its soldiers, but the slow process of canning foods and the even slower development and transport stages prevented the army from shipping large amounts across the French Empire, and the war ended before the process was perfected.
Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the canning process was gradually employed in other European countries and in the US.
Based on Appert's methods of food preservation, the tin can process was allegedly developed by Frenchman Philippe de Girard, who came to London and used British merchant Peter Durand as an agent to patent his own idea in 1810. Durand did not pursue food canning himself, selling his patent in 1811 to Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who were in business as Donkin Hall and Gamble, of Bermondsey. Bryan Donkin developed the process of packaging food in sealed airtight cans, made of tinned wrought iron. Initially, the canning process was slow and labor-intensive, as each large can had to be hand-made, and took up to six hours to cook, making canned food too expensive for ordinary people.
The main market for the food at this stage was the British Army and Royal Navy. By 1817, Donkin recorded that he had sold £3000 worth of canned meat in six months. In 1824, Sir William Edward Parry took canned beef and pea soup with him on his voyage to the Arctic in HMS Fury, during his search for a northwestern passage to India. In 1829, Admiral Sir James Ross also took canned food to the Arctic, as did Sir John Franklin in 1845. Some of his stores were found by the search expedition led by Captain (later Admiral Sir) Leopold McClintock in 1857. One of these cans was opened in 1939 and was edible and nutritious, though it was not analyzed for contamination by the lead solder used in its manufacture.
The Canning Process Spreads in Europe
During the mid-19th century, canned food became a status symbol among middle-class households in Europe, being something of a frivolous novelty. Early methods of manufacture employed poisonous lead solder for sealing the cans. Studies in the 1980s attributed the lead from the cans as a factor in the disastrous outcome of the 1845 Franklin expedition to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage. However, studies in 2013 and 2016 suggested that lead poisoning was likely not a factor and that the crew's ill health may, in fact, have been due to malnutrition – specifically zinc deficiency – possibly due to a lack of meat, or other sources of Zinc in their diet.
Increasing mechanization of the canning process, coupled with a huge increase in urban populations across Europe, resulted in a rising demand for canned food. A number of inventions and improvements followed, and by the 1860s smaller machine-made steel cans were possible, and the time to cook food in sealed cans had been reduced from around six hours to thirty minutes.
Canning Techniques Spread to the United States
Canned food also began to spread beyond Europe – Robert Ayars established the first American canning factory in New York City in 1812, using improved tin-plated wrought-iron cans for preserving oysters, meats, fruits, and vegetables. Demand for canned food greatly increased during wars. Large-scale wars in the nineteenth century, such as the Crimean War, American Civil War, and Franco-Prussian War, introduced increasing numbers of working-class men to canned food and allowed canning companies to expand their businesses to meet military demands for non-perishable food, enabling companies to manufacture in bulk and sell to wider civilian markets after wars ended. Urban populations in Victorian Britain demanded ever-increasing quantities of cheap, varied, quality food that they could keep at home without having to go shopping daily. In response, companies such as Underwood, Nestlé, Heinz, and others provided quality canned food for sale to working-class city-dwellers. The late 19th century saw the range of canned food available to urban populations greatly increase, as canners competed with each other using novel foodstuffs, highly decorated printed labels, and lower prices.
Canning and World War I
Demand for canned food skyrocketed during World War I, as military commanders sought vast quantities of cheap, high-calorie food to feed their millions of soldiers, which could be transported safely, survive trench conditions, and not spoil in transport. Throughout the war, British soldiers generally subsisted on low-quality canned foodstuffs, such as the British "Bully Beef" (cheap corned beef), pork and beans, canned sausages, and Maconochies Irish Stew, but by 1916, widespread dissatisfaction and increasing complaints about the poor-quality canned food among soldiers resulted in militaries seeking better-quality food to improve morale, and complete meals-in-a-can began to appear. In 1917, the French Army began issuing canned French cuisine, such as coq au vin, Beef Bourguignon, French onion soup, and Vichyssoise, while the Italian Army experimented with canned ravioli, Spaghetti Bolognese, Minestrone, and Pasta e fagioli. Shortages of canned food in the British Army during 1917 led to the government issuing large quantities of cigarettes and amphetamines to soldiers to suppress their appetites. After the war, companies that supplied military canned food sought to improve the quality of their goods for civilian sale.
Methods of Canning
The original fragile and heavy glass containers presented challenges for transportation, and glass jars were largely replaced in commercial canneries with a cylindrical tin can or wrought-iron canisters (later shortened to "cans") following the work of Peter Durand (1810). Cans are cheaper and quicker to make, and much less fragile than glass jars.
Can openers were not invented for another thirty years – at first, soldiers had to cut the cans open with bayonets or smash them open with rocks. Today, tin-coated steel is the material most commonly used. Laminate vacuum pouches are also used for canning, such as used in MREs and Capri Sun drinks. Today glass jars have remained the most popular approach to canning for some high-value products and in-home canning.
Microbial Control
To prevent the food from being spoiled before and during containment, a number of methods are used: pasteurization, boiling (and other applications of high temperature over a period of time), refrigeration, freezing, drying, vacuum treatment, antimicrobial agents that are natural to the recipe of the foods being preserved, a sufficient dose of ionizing radiation, submersion in a strong saline solution, acid, base, osmotically extreme (for example very sugary) or other microbially-challenging environments.
Other than sterilization, no method is perfectly dependable as a preservative. For example, the spores of the microorganism Clostridium botulinum (which causes botulism) can be eliminated only at temperatures above the boiling point of water.
From a public safety point of view, foods with low acidity (a pH of more than 4.6) need sterilization under high temperatures (116–130 °C). To achieve temperatures above the boiling point requires the use of a pressure canner. Foods that must be pressure canned, include most vegetables, meat, seafood, poultry, and dairy products. The only foods that may be safely canned in an ordinary boiling water bath are highly acidic ones with a pH below 4.6, such as fruits, pickled vegetables, or other foods to which acidic additives have been added.
Learn About Double Seams in Your Sealing Practices
Invented in 1888 by Max Ams, modern double seams provide an airtight seal to the tin can. This airtight nature is crucial to keeping microorganisms out of the can and keeping its contents sealed inside. Thus, double-seamed cans are also known as Sanitary Cans. Home canners attempt to somewhat duplicate this with Double-decking. This is the practice of running a canner with two layers of jars in it, one on top and one on the bottom, with a platform of some sort in between.
Nutritional value
Since canning is a way of processing food to extend its shelf life, the question naturally arises. How much nutritional value is lost after the canning process is completed? The idea is to make food available and edible long after the processing time.
A 1997 study found that canned fruits and vegetables are as rich in dietary fiber and vitamins as the same corresponding fresh or frozen foods, and in some cases the canned products are richer than their fresh or frozen counterparts. The heating process during canning appears to make the dietary fiber more soluble, and therefore more readily fermented in the colon into gases and physiologically active byproducts. Canned tomatoes have a higher available lycopene content. Consequently, canned meat and vegetables are often on the list of food items that are stocked during emergencies.
Potential Hazards
In the beginning of the 19th century, the process of canning foods was mainly done by small canneries. These canneries were full of overlooked sanitation problems, such as poor hygiene and unsanitary work environments. Since the refrigerator did not exist and industrial canning standards were not set in place it was very common for contaminated cans to slip onto the grocery store shelves.
Sodium Content
Salt (sodium chloride), dissolved in water, is used in the canning process, usually to enhance flavor. As a result, canned food can be a major source of dietary salt. Too much salt increases the risk of health problems, including high blood pressure. Therefore, health authorities have recommended limitations on dietary sodium. Many canned products are available in low-salt and no-salt alternatives.
Rinsing thoroughly after opening may reduce the amount of salt in canned vegetables since much of the salt content is thought to be in the liquid, rather than the food itself.
Botulism
Foodborne botulism results from contaminated foodstuffs in which C. botulinum spores have been allowed to germinate and produce botulism toxin, and this typically occurs in canned non-acidic food substances that have not received a strong enough thermal heat treatment. C. botulinum prefers low-oxygen environments and is a poor competitor to other bacteria, but its spores are resistant to thermal treatments. When canned food is sterilized insufficiently, most other bacteria besides the C. botulinum spores are killed, and the spores can germinate and produce botulism toxin. Botulism is a rare but serious paralytic illness, leading to paralysis that typically starts with the muscles of the face and then spreads toward the limbs. The botulinum toxin is extremely dangerous because it cannot be detected by sight or smell, and ingestion of even a small amount of the toxin can be deadly. In severe forms, it leads to paralysis of the breathing muscles and causes respiratory failure. In view of this life-threatening complication, all suspected cases of botulism are treated as medical emergencies, and public health officials are usually involved to prevent further cases from the same source.
Final Thoughts
Using canned foods is a perfect prepper, life hacking, and thrifting strategy. Canned goods and canning supplies sell particularly well in times of recession due to the tendency of financially stressed individuals to engage in cocooning, a term used by retail analysts to describe the phenomenon in which people choose to stay at home instead of adding expenditures to their budget by dining out and socializing outside the home. Also, some people may become preppers and proceed to stockpile canned food. A "doomer" prepper would also be interested in stockpiling canned food upon learning about a recession.
In February 2009 during a recession, the United States saw an 11.5% rise in sales of canning-related items.
Some communities in the US have county canning centers that are available for teaching canning or shared community kitchens that can be rented for canning one's own foods. Contact your local community center for more information on this
.….and remember, life is not a dress rehearsal!
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Author: Hey there. My name is Lewis Harrison, and I am a transformational coach, teacher, and prepper. I am a proponent of entrepreneurism and also a writer and seminar leader. The author of over twenty books, and numerous self-improvement, business success, and personal development courses, I am the former host of a talk show on NPR Affiliated WIOX91.3 FM.
“I believe to be more effective, efficient, precise, productive, successful, and more self-aware we need a coach or mentor. I have always had coaches and mentors, usually more than one. If you are ready, willing, and able to give up your unnecessary struggle, consider contacting me about becoming your coach-mentor. We can begin with a fifteen-minute call to see what your needs and challenges are and how I can help you address them”.
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The Course
On Monday, December 5, I will be offering a beginner’s 5-day course on How to Win the Game of Life through Strategic Thinking. I will tell you more about the course over the next few weeks.
The course will explore simple and minimalist thinking in terms of consumer choices.
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I can be contacted directly about the course, business and life coaching, and more advanced training in how to win the game of life, at LewisCoaches@gmail.com
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