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?
You are probably consuming more salt then you should, but you won’t get cancer or anything like that. A good alternative would be peanut butter and white bread. You could add something like peanut butter sandwiches to reduce the amount of canned food, or could move to frozen veggies instead. But as a direct response to your question, usually canned food’s biggest issue the salt content and just being overcooked.
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First of all, you’re making great steps by changing your diet and asking questions like this! Small steps are sustainable steps.
Canned beans and veggies will definitely retain a lot of their salt regardless of rinsing because of osmosis. You should be able to find low salt/no salt added versions of more common items like tomatoes and black beans - try tasting the difference for yourself! Properly salted things don’t taste salty, because salt will boost other flavors before you taste it. I’ll also echo the recommendation of frozen veggies, and if you have the time and patience for it, dried beans are super cheap and easy to make. But the most important thing is knowing what you can handle as a routine, so if canned is what works for you, then don’t be ashamed.
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Fair enough. If you do want some easy suggestions for meals, here is one of my go to’s (I’m also lazy and only cook one decent meal a week really so I have a lot of things like this that takes about 5 mins start to finish.)
Mexican Street Corn in a Cup. INGREDIENTS 1 Package of Steam In Bag Yellow Whole Kernel Corn. 1/2 TSP Salt 1/2 TSP Pepper 1/4 TSP Sugar 1/2 TSP Chili Powder 1/4 TSP Or To Taste - Cheyenne Pepper 2-4 TBSP Good Quality Mayo 1 TSP Lime Juice 1 TBSP finely shredded Cotija cheese (Can sub Parm but won’t be exact) 1 TBSP finely chopped Cilantro (Optional)
INSTRUCTIONS Cook corn as instructed.
While corn cooks, combine rest of the ingredients.
When corn is done, combine with mayo and cheese mix and make sure corn gets well coated. Eat it hot.
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