The most exciting week of the tinned food year?

A number of my posts so far have attempted to mark various occasions or happenings of note with a culinary experiment of some kind involving a tinned food product. This week though, the dining tables are turned, as it is tinned foods themselves that will be celebrated with their very own seven-day event. That’s right – from Monday 14th to Sunday 20th April, the humble tin will be getting the recognition it deserves during Canned Food Week. Apologies for not having let you know sooner.

Now you may be shocked - upset, even - that you've never heard of Canned Food Week before. I certainly was, but I'm ok now. Don't worry though, as this is only the second year it has taken place, and the organisers, Canned Food UK, assure us on their website that in 2014 it "promises to be bigger and better than ever".



N.B. Quick, easy and nutritious recipes
can also be cooked without James Martin

Perhaps you've never heard of Canned Food UK either? Well, they are an organisation that "promotes the benefits of canned food", particularly in terms of its convenience, offering a range of quick and easy recipes featuring at least one tinned product, some of which I may even try out and then feature in future blogposts. A number of the recipes are by James Martin, the so-called "housewife's favourite" TV chef, of Saturday Kitchen fame. I once saw him give a live cookery demonstration at Westfield Stratford and found him to be rather arrogant, so he's certainly not my favourite. But then I'm not a housewife.


Another section of the site seeks to champion the nutritional value of tinned foods with a selection of "Canny Facts" - a pun so bad it gives some of the titles of my blogposts a run for their money - though these are somewhat less convincing given that in effect they just list the various vitamins and minerals contained in different foods, rather than any specific benefits of those in tins. "Canned carrots contains beta-carotene which converts vitamin A in the body", we are told. Good to know, but so do fresh carrots, and probably in far greater quantity. I suppose it's never a bad thing to be educating people about food and what it contains, but facts such as "Canned Irish stew, mince and meatballs are a great source of iron which carries oxygen in the blood to our organs and muscles" do seem to be clutching at straws a bit. Of course that could be my recent Irish stew experience colouring my judgement.

A page on the environmental advantages of tins offers some interesting food for thought on recycling and saving energy, endorsed by Phillipa Forrester, the TV presenter-turned-"recycling guru" (apparently) - I now know, for example, that recycling seven steel cans saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 26 hours. Gosh. Any attempts to get people recycling more and throwing away less should of course be praised, but whether cans are the most environmentally friendly method of packaging to begin with is not something the site touches upon.



Tinned broccoli? No, just a stock image from the site  to
represent the environmental benefits of recycling cans

Likewise I am a little sceptical about some of the statements relating to saving energy - "All canned foods are already cooked in the can so you only need to heat them up which saves both time and energy". Yeeeees, but they weren't just magically cooked without energy in the first place, were they? And the assertion tins cut food waste as they have a long shelf life seems to overlook the fact that countless tins are thrown away each year without having even been opened, as they have sat there in the cupboard forgotten about until they pass their best before date.



Fork-lift truck + huge stack of tins. Best job ever?

I probably sound a little unfairly dismissive of the site's contents in general; there is some genuinely quite interesting information regarding the history of canning, and the manufacturing processes used today, including downloadable learning resources for the classroom and recipe cards. But it is when you learn that Canned Food UK's members are all "organisations from across the industry including can fillers, can makers and steel producers" that you understand why it wants to promote as many benefits of tins as it possibly can - it keeps them in business. The fact that some of the facts seem a little dubious suggests to me that they were really having to scratch their heads to come up with enough to make the website worthwhile. 

Most of all though, I just wish they'd stop calling it "canned food", which sounds jarringly American to my ears. Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer "tinned" as a term. To me, 'cans' will always refer to the thinner, aluminium packaging for drinks; food comes in tins, or tin cans if you like, and that's how they'll always be referred to on this blog.

Getting back to Canned Food Week though, I'm afraid to say even that is a bit of a damp squib too. For each day of the week, Canned Food UK have teamed up with a different partner organisation (such as the Vegetarian Society) to provide two or three new tinned food recipes with a vague theme, from "Make it Simple Monday", through "Tiny Tums Thursday" to "Scrummy Sunday". In an attempt at sustaining a bit of a surprise element throughout the week, each day's recipes are only revealed on the morning itself, but I would think just this means that it's unlikely anyone will actually cook them on the day, unless they happen to have the ingredients to hand or will be making a supermarket visit that evening.

Tuna kedgeree. Did you know that tuna
contains primary-fat soluble antioxidants that
support muscle function? No, nor did I.
Thanks, Canned Food UK!

Indeed, at the time of writing, Canned Food UK's request that people add photos of their creations onto their Facebook or Twitter pages appears to have fallen on deaf ears. And given that Easter falls this weekend, it seems more likely that people will be tucking into the usual roast lamb and so on than the tuna kedgeree or spiced pinto and baked bean wraps which are among the recipes featured so far - unless James Martin can really pull it out of the bag with his offerings for Saturday and Sunday. And they'd have to be really bloody good if he wants to redeem himself in my eyes.

A special competition was announced this morning to win £100 of supermarket vouchers, which would be worth having (you could buy a lot of tins with that), but otherwise that's about it as far as the celebrations go. So if this year's event is "bigger and better than ever", it sounds like we didn't miss out on much in 2013. But anyway, why restrict yourself to just one  week to celebrate the joys of tinned food? Through this blog I shall be doing so 52 weeks a year, and to borrow one of Canned Food UK's woeful puns, I hope "u.can" join me for more of these culinary adventures into the unknown...