It has most of the nutritional value it had before it was canned but some vitamins degrade pretty rapidly.
One of the factors in food preservation and nutrition is the stability of different vitamins. Specifically, there are water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins.
Water-soluble vitamins dissolve in water. They are less stable and more affected by processing and include folate, thiamine, and vitamin C. Fat-soluble vitamins dissolve in fat. They’re more stable and include water, vitamin A, D, E, and K. Fat-soluble vitamins are less effected by cooking and preserving.
Basically it depends on what the food is and how it is preserved
If I’m honest with you though there is no harm in eating canned food and no such thing as “empty calories” all of your daily nutrients are important and you should get them but not meeting you daily quota isn’t such a huge deal as long as it isn’t especially consistent. Calories are your fuel but you can think of vitamins and micro nutrients as your oil that keeps things running smoothly.
If your diet is primarily canned goods I would recommend taking a multivitamin or altering your diet to include fresh produce containing those water soluble vitamins.
Just because it’s tinned doesn’t mean it’s not nutritional… Most things in a can aren’t changed or added to in any way other than pasteurization after being sealed to kill anything on the food in the can.
At worst, canned soups and meats and sometimes vegetables with added salt have too much salt and canned fruits have added sugar when they are packed in “syrup” instead of water or their own juice.
Well, your question as asked has the answer of yes, and then no.
Canning absolutely does not destroy or otherwise remove “nutrition” totally. And, as such, if the food that is canned was not empty calories to begin with (which is a kinda bullshit term tbh, since the only thing that covers is sugars only, and maybe fats only, which nobody cans), then the food inside the can is not empty either.
As others have said, the process of canning does break down some nutrients. However, so does cooking to some degree. But, cooking also makes some things easier to extract from the food as it goes through digestion, so it isn’t like raw things are inherently better than their cooked versions by virtue of being raw.
So, in general, canned foods are going to be “good enough” on average, when it comes to vitamins and minerals. Some things will be better than others in that regard, so you’d have to look things up as you go and figure out what is going to be reduced enough to merit going through extra effort to obtain and store frozen/raw.
Somewhere in between. The canning process does alter the ingredients, but not by a whole hell of a lot compared to something like, say, cooking them.
So, they still can have good nutrition. The bigger thing to worry about are things like extra salt and sugar added, which can add up with other things in your diet to reach an unhealthy amount.
All that said, frozen is usually better these days, pretty much across-the-board.
Canned foods tend to have less nutrients compared to fresh or frozen fruits/veggies.
IIRC, frozen actually has the most nutrients because its harvested when its ripest versus fresh produce thats harvested earlier than it should be and "ripens " as its delivered and shelved. Could be wrong, just something I remember hearing.
I prefer fresh to frozen, because of the texture changes.
Huh, well it’s definitely got some of the nutritional values added (fat, salt, carbs, protein, etc.), but vitamins appear to be absent. In the US, if they weren’t listed, I would assume they were not present but TBF, I have no idea how (if at all) labeling is regulated in the UK.
The standard US “Nutrition Facts” label is very limited and typically doesn’t include much information on micro nutrients. I don’t know how it compares to other regions, but it certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
Yeah it would be nice to have mandatory micronutrient labeling. Some labels have them, others don’t. I think it might be up to the producer to decide which micronutrients they can list.
Interestingly, UK foods destined for import in the US market use the US label and do include that information. Heinz Beans have 50mb calcium, 1.5mg Iron, and 370mg potassium per 130g serving, for example.
So, maybe 20 years ago when I was in middle school I had a dream that I was being chased by a long, giant, weasel with hundreds of legs like a millipede. This happened at an overnight LAN party at a friend’s house. I sometimes talk in my sleep and my friends overheard me muttering about the “chainweasel” in my dreams and I never lived it down.
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