When it comes to sorting out a quick weeknight meal, tinned foods are a total lifesaver. Whether it’s vegetables, fruits or beans, they are so much healthier than the other easy options we might reach for – frozen pizzas, takeaways and UPF-laden ready meals first among them – and far better for our wallets, too.
Because the canning process preserves foods at peak freshness, many are actually more nutritious than some fresh food you’ll find loose on the supermarket shelves. Compared with fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes contain more calcium, iron and lycopene (an antioxidant), while some research suggests that tinned pink or red salmon may contain more omega-3 than a fresh fillet.
But tinned foods are not perfect, even when they appear to contain little more than water and legumes. A peek at the label on a tin can reveal all sorts of nutritional facts woesome for our health: high salt and added sugar, saturated fats or ingredients we’ve never heard of before, a telltale sign that what we’ve just picked up is an ultra-processed food.
Just take the tinned carbonara that Heinz announced it would roll out to supermarkets in August. A scan of the ingredients list on the company’s website shows that the product contains little of the protein you would expect from a ham-heavy carbonara and more than 7g of sugar – and 2g of salt – to boot.
“I generally suggest that people limit their consumption of ultra-processed foods and try cooking from scratch. Tinned foods can save them so much time and money so I’m often recommending various ones in my clinic,” says Caroline Farrell, a British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine-registered nutritionist with 12 years of experience.
Those with the healthiest diets are often eating lots of tinned foods throughout the week, Farrell says, but “you want to be sceptical and look closely at the labels for different additives as well as added salt and sugar”.
That can get tricky when you’re running around the supermarket in a desperate bid for something to eat. So we asked Farrell to look at more than 30 tinned foods and give her verdict on which can bolster your diet, and which are best avoided.
