Don't let mad pig disease stop you from trying this zombie food in a can! From meat and dairy
staples to a famous diet brand, here are some classic canned foods that got the can.
Canned bacon was likely invented as a way to make this popular meat easy to ship,
store, and prepare. While it was once more popular, it's much tougher to find today,
although it remains a popular item to store for emergencies.
There are few manufacturers producing canned bacon today, but the easiest to find is Yoders.
This Amish family company is based in Ohio and produces a variety of foods, including a line
of canned meat designed for use when camping or traveling, as well as for long-term food storage.
Yoders' canned bacon is fully cooked and drained. Rather than being filled with liquid,
the bacon is actually rolled into paper and inserted into the can. When you remove it
and unroll it, it will look very similar to the same bacon you'd pull from a refrigerated packet,
except this variety can be stored for up to 10 years.
There was a time when eating every part of the animal, including the brains and other organs,
was not only common, but a necessity to make the most of any meat available. In fact, as far back
as Roman times in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, brains have been included in cookbooks.
They were stuffed into sausages, cooked into puddings, and flavored with fruit, wine, and more.
But today, you'd be hard-pressed to find brains on any menu or grocery store. As recently as the
1990s, however, the brain was a popular, trendy ingredient. And back in the 1970s,
canned brains offered shoppers an easy-to-prepare, shelf-stable delicacy.
Rose Pork Brains with Milk Gravy were once an actual canned product available in American
grocery stores, especially in the South. They were often served with scrambled eggs. While
these have been a rare find in grocery stores for decades, they're no doubt even harder to
find today following an outbreak of illness linked to pork brain processing in 2008.
"Brains!"
Back in the late 1920s when Chef Boyardee began mass-producing sauces, plastic wasn't
yet widely available. In fact, everyday storage conveniences like Tupperware weren't even invented
until the mid-1940s. Chef Boyardee's big moneymaker at the time was a pre-packaged,
easy-to-make, nutritious spaghetti dinner. This boxed meal included dried pasta,
canned pasta sauce, and even canned grated cheese. You can still find
this grated cheese for auction online, although we wouldn't recommend using it.
Up until the mid-1900s, plastic was a newly discovered concept that wasn't
readily available in consumer products the way that it is today. So with this lack of plastic,
how else was Chef Boyardee supposed to package shelf-stable foods like sauces
and grated cheese? The only available option was the formidable tin can.
Thanks to frequently changing taste preferences and food intolerances,
you can find tortillas that cover most dietary preferences, like corn, flour,
gluten-free, cauliflower, and canned. Yes indeed, canned tortillas used to be a thing.
Just like Chef Boyardee's canned grated cheese, purchasing corn or flour tortillas in a circular
metal tin was the norm before polyurethane bags became the new standard in packaging.
The El Paso brand wasn't the original creator of the canned tortilla, as Ashley's Mexican Food
was actually the first company to sling canned American-style Mexican food. But it looks like
El Paso might have been a bit more aggressive with its marketing tactics. Although it's still worth
noting that Ashley's was pretty much responsible for bringing this fusion cuisine to the masses.
Nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to find a can of El Paso tortillas. Even an empty one
is pretty much out of the question. Thanks to the discovery of polyethylene and the creation
of nonbiodegradable plastic wrappers, canned tortillas are most definitely no
longer on the menu. But if you do happen to find an empty one, it makes a great pot for succulents.
Traditionally, deviled ham is just pureed ham with spices. It's considered a cross between
a salad and a spread. A traditional homemade recipe also calls for celery, raw white onion,
pickles, and mayonnaise. It's similar to what you'd put in a chicken salad sandwich,
but it also has the qualities of something you'd spread on a cracker.
The original deviled ham brand, William Underwood Company, is still found in grocery stores across
the United States, where it graces shelves with its diabolical presence. Although it's still in
production, it's not very popular in most of the country, unless you're in the South, where it
remains a kitchen staple. Perhaps the diminishing popularity of canned deviled ham has to do
with the fact that the mascot on the Underwood Company label is a demon flaunting a pitchfork.
"Try our unholy trinity of evil meat spreads. They're devilicious."
You might not consider SlimFast a food, but the company that makes it apparently thinks of it
that way. According to SlimFast's website, you're allowed to eat one "sensible" 500-calorie meal
and enjoy three SlimFast-approved snacks a day. Your other two meals are meant to be supplemented
with the imitation shake. Although they're now sold in bottles, SlimFast used to be canned.
It appears that Unilever SlimFast's parent company, was incredibly conscious about its
own brand image. In 2011, Kathy O'Brien, VP of foods for Unilever U.S., announced,
"Our new Slim-Fast shakes make it even easier — and tastier — for
dieters to walk into a room and wow the crowd."
Basically, the message here seemed to be that cans were boring and weren't drawing enough attention
to dieters who were walking around with these meal-replacement shakes. But perhaps the company
should've been more concerned about consumer safety. Back in 2009, SlimFast was hit with not
one, but two major recalls. Only the canned drinks were pulled off the shelves and quickly redesigned
to be more in line with what the "perfect female form" should look like, according to a case study
by Avery Dennison. It might seem a little weird for such a major corporation to be hung up on
body shape stereotypes, but either way, the canned variety of SlimFast has gone the way of the dodo.