Monday, February 12, 2018

Critique: Always Save Pork & Beans!

I've always felt that if a food product comes out of a can, it's probably not the best choice you could make from a  nutritional perspective.


Many 'canned' foods you can buy at the local stores are high in one sort of preservative or another. Salt is quite often used, or one could say, even abused. Let's examine a single 130 gram or 1/2 cup serving of a popular item known as pork and beans, for instance. A quick glance at the nutritional label is less than encouraging for what is essentially a bean dish. The single highlight, if you will, is the exceptionally high fiber content coming in at 6 grams. Applause for that! But, I'm afraid it's all down hill from there.

Other than the HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) which is a dietary no-no in any food, you also have a boatload of salt (440 mg) not to mention fairly high levels of saturated fat (.5 g). This is not the kind of 'food' I would have ever eaten when I was young, had I known any better. There are far better choices in the produce section. That said, it's even worst when you add in a Frankfurter and a slice slice of toast to the mix. I won't go into the dietary horrors of a meal I enjoy too often as this post is all about the beans!

My suggestion for companies that choose to make and to distribute products like this would be to perhaps give consumers some alternatives. For instance, how about a can of pork and beans without the HFCS and perhaps more potassium chloride and a bit lest of the sodium version. I'm not sure as to the cost or the taste, but I could tell you that I would have a more favorable view of companies that tried it.

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