"Is Canned Fruit as Healthy?"
Food cans used to be soldered with lead compounds,
so much so that people living off of canned food
may have died from lead poisoning.
Thankfully this is no longer a problem in the United States.
Lead contamination was actually one of the first priorities of the FDA,
before it was even called the FDA back in 1906.
It's great that newspapers now have online archives going back a century
so we can read about landmark historical events like
"FDA Proposes Lead-Soldered Cans be Banned" way back yonder in 1993?
Going into effect in 1995.
Evidently it was complicated because lead solder was grandfathered in
as a prior-sanctioned substance.
Now that the lead is gone though, are canned foods healthy?
It primarily depends on what's in the can. . .
If it's Spam-dandy, I'd probably pass.
Let's give canned food the benefit of the doubt though.
What about canned fruit?
We know fruits and vegetables in general may help protect us from dying
from cardiovascular disease, and when it comes to preventing strokes,
fruit may be even more protective,
but whether food processing affects this association was unknown.
This study found that unprocessed produce, mostly apples and oranges,
appeared superior to processed produce,
but that was mainly orange and apple juice.
No surprise whole fruit is better than fruit juice.
What about whole fruit, just in a can?
Dietary guidelines encourage all fruit— fresh, frozen, and canned—
but few studies have examined the health benefits of canned fruit until now.
Canned fruit did not seem able to enable people to live longer.
In fact, moving from fresh or dried fruit to canned fruit might even shorten one's life.
So maybe dietary guidelines should stress fresh, frozen, and dried
rather than canned. Why the difference?
There's no more lead, but there is that plastics chemical, BPA,
that is used in the lining of most cans,
which can leach into the food and might counterbalance some of the fruit benefits.
Recently blood levels of this chemical was associated with thickening of the lining
of the arteries going up to the brains of young adults, for example.
Canned fruit is often packed in syrup as well, with all that added sugar,
and the canning process might diminish some nutrients, potentially wiping out
20 to 40% of the phenolic phytonutrients, and about half of the vitamin C.
You know, maybe one of the reasons citrus appears
particularly protective against stroke is the vitamin C.
It appears the more vitamin C in our diet, the lower our risk of stroke;
and the more vitamin C in our bloodstream, the lower our risk of stroke.
But how did the vitamin C get in our bloodstream?
These people must have been eating a lot of healthy foods, like citrus,
tropical fruits, broccoli, bell peppers.
Therefore, the observed effect of vitamin C on stroke reduction
may simply be a proxy for specific healthy foods that lower stroke risk.
How could we tell?
Well, we could just give people just vitamin C pills
instead, and see if they work.
And they don't.
Citrus fruits have all sorts of other compounds associated
with lower stroke risk. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
You can't capture Mother Nature in a pill.
It's like the apocryphal beta-carotene story.
Dozens of studies showed that people who ate more beta-carotene rich foods
like greens and sweet potatoes, and therefore had more beta-carotene
circulating in their system had lower cancer risk.
But how much money can we make selling carrots?
So they tried giving people beta-carotene pills,
and not only did they not work; they may have even caused more cancer.
So I assumed this National Cancer Institute researcher
would conclude the obvious: produce, not pills.
But no, maybe we should have tried lower dose pills, or maybe alpha carotene pills,
or pills with other phytochemicals, or multiple combinations.
After all, it is likely that neither the public nor the scientific community
will be satisfied with recommendations concerned solely with mere foods.