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CANNED vs FRESH
“THE FACTS”
• Fact: Canned fruits make a significant contribution to key nutrients. Canned fruits such as peaches and apricots can make significant contributions to RDA for vitamin C and A.
• Fact: Fresh does not always mean more nutritious. A recent review of research on canned and fresh fruit by the University of California, Davis, reveals that loss of nutrients in fresh products may be more substantial than commonly perceived: storage and cooking can lead to overall losses of more than 60 percent prior to consumption.
• Fact: Fiber is unchanged regardless of fruit or vegetable form. In general, the USDA database shows that canned and fresh fruits contained the similar amounts of fiber. Overall, canned fruits were never consistently lower than fresh fruits for any nutrient.
• Fact: The government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 recognize canned foods play a significant role in helping children and their families meet MyPyramid’s recommendations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new food guidance system identifies canned foods as a way to help people consume the recommended daily variety and amount of fruits, vegetables, meats and beans.
• Fact: Canned Fruits do not contribute significantly to American’s sugar or sodium intake. In fact, all canned fruits contribute less than 2 percent of added sugars in most American’s diets and zero percent of sodium.
• Fact: The ingredients you choose, not the form of the ingredients, are what determine a recipe’s nutrient content. A three-part study conducted by the University of Massachusetts found that, nutritionally and taste-wise, recipes prepared with canned ingredients and those prepared using fresh ingredients were rated comparably. This research also showed similar nutrient profiles of dishes made from canned, cooked fresh and/or frozen ingredients.
• Fact: Canning facilities are located close to the orchards and fields where the fruit is grown. The fruits are ripened naturally, picked at the peak of ripeness, delivered to the cannery for preparation, canned, locking in freshness and nutrition.
• Fact: No preservatives are used during canning. Canning sterilizes food, using heat to destroy microorganisms, also maintaining the quality of the fresh picked fruit.
• Fact: Canned fruits are preserved in their high quality state while fresh fruit may be harvested before they are ripe. Fresh fruit many times is harvest before it is ripe so as to withstand shipments from the orchard or field. The fruit may be artificially ripen and due to length of time before being used in a recipe will lose nutrition and degrade in quality.
• Fact: Canned fruits save the foodservice industry money verses fresh fruit. Canned peaches save 30 cents per pound verses fresh peaches; they are already pitted, peeled and cut. Fresh fruit is not 100 percent useable; many times there are bruised, cut or otherwise damaged units, which have to be discarded. With canned fruit the processing facility removes the pits, peel and damaged fruit before canning, saving time, labor and increasing yields.
• Fact: Canned fruit is convenient and safe. Canned fruit provides a year around availability, processing stabilizes the food quality and extends the shelf life. Because canned fruit is thermally processed the product inside is safe from food-borne illnesses. According to The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), in food poisoning outbreaks, contaminated produce was the cause of the largest amount of incidences. Fresh fruit may be contaminated due to improper washing, eaten past its viability, using contaminated cutting tools or unsanitary growing conditions.
CANNED FRUIT ….. HEALTHY, SAFE AND CONVENIENT
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