Canned Food

Podcast Transcript

For thousands of years, food preservation was a significant challenge for humanity.

Even if you were successful in hunting or gathering food, if you could not preserve it, it would be difficult to keep enough for survival.

One of the most important advancements in the history of food preservation was the development of canning, which allowed for food to be preserved for significantly longer periods of time.

Sometimes, very long periods of time.

Learn more about the history of canning and its impact on the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Food preservation has been a massive problem for centuries.

Food starts to spoil the second it is collected, so to combat this, people had to develop methods to preserve food.

Forms of preservation like drying, fermentation, pickling, and salt curing were discovered, helping to keep food preserved for longer periods.

I have previously done episodes on the use of salt for preservation and frozen foods.

However, perhaps the most revolutionary method of food preservation was the development of canning.

So, let’s start with how canning works.

Canning is a pretty simple process. It involves placing foods into jars or cans and heating them to a high temperature.

The container is closed while at a high temperature, which creates a vacuum seal, preventing outside microorganisms from contaminating the food within the jar or can, and minimizes the amount of oxygen in the container.

By doing this, food can be preserved significantly longer than other methods, typically from one to five years, but potentially lasting much longer.

Much, much longer.

The origins of canning come from France.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the French needed an effective and cheap way to store vast amounts of food for the Grande Armée.

The French government offered 12,000 francs to any inventor who could achieve this.

This prize was considered to be worthwhile as food availability prevented armies from campaigning during the winter. They could only fight during the summer and autumn when fresh food was available.

This prize was won by Nicolas Appert.

Appert is considered to be the “Father of Food Science.”

Appert was a confectioner and brewer. In 1804, he had begun to experiment with preserving food.

He would do so by putting food into glass jars, sealing the jars, and then boiling them.

He had noticed that when he would seal food inside jars and boil it, the food would not spoil as long as the seal wasn’t broken.

Historians believe that this method of preservation may have originated in small households, but Appert is given credit for making canning an industrialized method.

Utilizing glass jars, he took his discovery to the French Minister of the Interior, Count Montelivert, and was awarded the prize in 1810.

Though the French and Appert knew that the method worked, they did not know the reason why the food didn’t spoil.

However, this method of canning was not super effective for the French Army.

Glass jars were fragile and heavy, making transportation across the French Empire very slow.

Additionally, the canning process itself was also slow, making the development of the product logistically difficult for the French Army.

The Napoleonic Wars ended before significant amounts of canned food could be shipped, and the method could be perfected.

The next known development in canning took place in the United Kingdom.

In 1810, another Frenchman, Philippe de Girard, brought the canning process to London.

In 1810, Englishman Peter Durand patented a similar method using tin-coated iron cans instead of glass.

The idea was based on the glass seals Appert had developed the year prior, except that using metal cans was both cheaper and quicker to make and was more durable.

In 1812, he sold the patent for the tin can to fellow Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall.

Donkin and Hall used this to create the world’s first commercial canning factory.

Their initial canning process had some very serious flaws.

The method they used to seal the can was lead soldering, which resulted in increased risks of lead poisoning.

Additionally, this process was slow and labor-intensive. Each can was handmade, and the heating process could take six hours.

During the early 19th century, canning was typically done by smaller companies that were underregulated.

They would be plagued with unsanitary conditions. The unhygienic working conditions often led to contaminated cans being found on shelves.

Nonetheless, there was a great deal of demand for canned food.

The British Army and Navy had a huge demand for canned food. Canned meat and fruit began to accompany sailors on their voyages across the oceans. This allowed for foods to be available on long voyages that had never been possible before.

By the mid-19th century, canned food had become a status symbol. It was considered to be an item that only the rich could afford.

In the United States, the first canning factory was established by Thomas Kensett in 1825 in New York, initially canning oysters, fruits, and vegetables.

During the US Civil War, canned food became essential for feeding Union troops. This boosted industrial canning and familiarized American consumers with canned goods.

Around this time, can-making machines greatly increased output by not requiring each can to be hand-sealed.

The work of Louis Pasteur in the 1860s finally explained why canning worked. The process is actually pretty simple.

Microbes are primarily responsible for food spoilage, but in the early 19th century, this wasn’t known, just as germs weren’t known to cause disease.

All methods of food preservation involve preventing microbial growth in food. In the case of canning, it uses heat to kill microbes in the food.

Cans are heated, usually under pressure, to reach temperatures higher than boiling water to ensure sterilization.

The second step is simply to seal the container to prevent future contamination. Most of the innovation in food canning has been in this part of the process, in sealing and the canning material.

After the Civil War ended, the remaining supply of canned food that was intended for the army was sold to the public, which is one reason why canning became increasingly prevalent in households for the average citizen.

In 1890, the invention of the double-seam can was developed. In this type of can a crimped rather than soldered seal was used, improving safety and shelf life by eliminating lead soldering.

This was a huge innovation, and it is the same basic system that is still used today.

This method involves interlocking the lid and body of the can mechanically and then sealing it by rolling or crimping the two layers of metal together. Today, there is often a thin rubber layer that is placed between the crimp to ensure a better seal.

World War I saw the next development in canning.

As the First World War raged on, demand for canned food continued to skyrocket.

Militaries across the world desired food rations for their soldiers, and needed this food to be both cheap and provide the necessary calories.

Canned food was a proven safe method to transport food and would not spoil in the trenches.

However, the food was unpopular.

Many soldiers felt the canned goods weren’t of high quality and would complain to their superiors.

To help improve morale, the military started to request higher-quality food.

This sparked a series of innovations, including new foods such as Spam, stews, powdered milk, better nutrition, and more compact packaging.

Canned food became a staple of the post-war consumer society, especially in the United States and Europe. It symbolized modernity, hygiene, and efficiency.

Products expanded to include everything from canned pasta and fruit cocktails to pet food and ready-to-eat meals.

Nutritionally, canned food is just as nutrient-rich as in its fresh or frozen form, at least over reasonably short periods. Unlike curing or drying, it doesn’t fundamentally change the food, and unlike freezing, it doesn’t require a constant source of energy.

Additionally, canning is relatively cheap. Canned foods are usually more affordable than frozen foods.

This is why, during times of crisis, canned goods sell quite well.

During times of financial stress, people try to budget by not going out to eat and buying cheaper goods. This is why canned goods sold well in the 2008 Recession.

Canned food is also popular with preppers, or people who prepare for natural disasters.

Canned food stores well, and you can often buy it in bulk.

Now to the big question that many of you might have: just how long can food be stored in a can?

Much of this depends on the quality of the can and how it was stored. Ideally, you want to store canned food in a cool and dry place.

You probably don’t want canned food to freeze, especially if it has water in it, as the expansion of the frozen water could break the seal. Likewise, you don’t want to store it anywhere too hot, as it could accelerate any chemical reactions that are taking place inside.

To maintain the best quality of food, it is best to eat canned goods within the first year. Most of the “best if used by” dates on cans will usually be within a few years after canning.

That being said, canned food can be kept much longer than a few years. In fact, as far as we know, canned food can preserve food almost indefinitely.

One of the best examples was cans of food that were taken from the 1865 sinking of the steamboat Bertrand in the Missouri River. When excavated in 1968, archaeologists uncovered hundreds of intact cans containing oysters, peaches, tomatoes, and even brandied cherries.

In 1974, some of the canes were opened and tested. It was found that the food inside contained no bacterial growth, and the food was still perfectly edible.

It wasn’t just that the food lasted 109 years; it was that food canned in the 1860s, not using modern techniques, and was still able to be preserved that well.

This isn’t an isolated example. In the process of researching this, I found not just many examples of canned food that were decades old being eaten, but there are entire YouTube channels that do this.

The oldest example I could find, and there might be even more extreme ones out there, was a man who in 2018 ate canned British military rations from the Boer War, which were made between 1899 and 1902. This was edible, but not necessarily tasty.

There are many other such cases.

A British couple, Les and Beryl Lailey, were married in 1956. One of their wedding gifts was a basket of food, which included a can of Buxted Chicken. The couple decided to keep the can in their cupboard and open it on their 50th wedding anniversary, which they did in 2006.

A German chemist named Hans Feldmeier received a can of lard in 1948, as part of a post-war shipment of food aid. He kept the can for 64 years and opened it in 2012 in the presence of chemists who tested it. They found the lard to be edible and even ate some on bread.

US Army Colonel Henry Moak served in Vietnam, where he received a ration in a can that had pound cake. He kept the can and opened it 35 years later on the day of his retirement from the Army.

The pound cake was totally edible.

While almost every case of very old canned food that I could find was edible after decades, not every one was.

The oldest unopened can of food that I’ve found evidence of was canned in 1824. It was found in the pantry of a family in Fort Ross, California, in 2010. It was a can of popcorn, which seems like an odd thing to can, but I guess that’s what they did.

When they opened it, the popcord was just a black mass and smelled of oil. This was not edible.

This was probably more of an issue of 1824 canning technology than it was how long it was in the can, per se.

I’m guessing that many of you might have some forgotten can of something in your house that has been sitting there for years. If you want to open it, the odds are, assuming the can is in good shape and has been stored properly, that the contents are edible.

The takeaway is that if the zombie apocalypse comes, you will probably be safe in scrounging canned food for years after it happens.

Canning has played a crucial role in the development of modern food preservation. By creating an affordable method to keep food for long periods of time, the quality of life for millions of people around the world has improved dramatically.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by Olivia Ashe.

Today’s review comes from listener TimF1965 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:

Wooza I’m hooked

Ran across this podcast a few months ago. I’ve always been a history buff but Gary has introduced me to many topics that I was unaware of. I decided to start back at episode one and I’m on episode 800.

I learned that it’s not a good idea to eat a corned beef sandwich in space along with other useful information.

Thanks, Tim! People might laugh at you now, but if you ever find yourself in space and someone is about to open up a package with a corned beef sandwich, you’ll be the one getting the last laugh.

Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you, too, can have it read on the show.