Are Canned Foods Healthy?

I loved Popeye cartoons when I was a little kid. Heck, I still do, and I’m not ashamed to shout it from the rooftops. This is why, when my mom popped open a can of spinach as a “healthy” side for dinner, I’d wolf it down and dance around flexing my bicep muscles like the Sailor Man himself. Something about that delicious, salty flavor just spoke to me, and the not-so-subtle advertising certainly worked magic on my impressionable little brain. 

Later on down the road, when presented with actual, fresh spinach, I was flummoxed. What happened to the salty goodness (not to mention slimy appearance) I’d always treasured? My world was rocked when I found out that vegetables, when done properly, don’t taste like they’ve been hosed down with concentrated sodium. Before you get too down on my parents, remember that this was back in the 1980s when people were still allowed to smoke on airplanes. Research simply hadn’t caught up with the times on many fronts.

Unfortunately, most of us struggle with what food companies want us to believe regarding nutrition, versus what’s actually true. Even if you (like me) adore canned food, there’s really no good reason to keep up the habit because there are so many better and equally easy alternatives. Do these excuses sound familiar?

But... canned veggies have to be healthy because they’re vegetables: Even canned veggies do retain some nutritional benefit, but it pays to read labels, especially when sodium is involved. “We hear a lot about calories, fat, and sugar, but sodium is a major problem in the American diet,” says Wendy Palmer, MS, RD, LD. “This is primarily because the American diet is very high in sodium, especially our abundance of ready to eat, fast food and restaurant foods.” Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) reports that too much sodium causes hypertension, which affects a startling one in three adults in the United States. Pretty much all experts agree that something has to change regarding sodium intake because hypertension is no joke.

Hypertension means high blood pressure

Nearly one-third of all American adults have high blood pressure. High blood pressure is when your blood pressure is higher than normal for an extended period of time. Most people with high blood pressure do not know they have the condition until it is discovered by a doctor.

The prevalence of high blood pressure increases with age, with 65% of men and 75% of women having high blood pressure after the age of 64. 

People over the age of 55 with normal blood pressure have a 90% risk of developing hypertension in their lifetime.

When you have high blood pressure, your heart is working harder than normal to pump blood through your body. This is something you can’t feel. In fact, high blood pressure is commonly called a “silent killer” because it usually has no noticeable symptoms. Despite the lack of symptoms, untreated high blood pressure can lead to a greater risk for stroke or heart attack. That is why frequent blood pressure monitoring is vital.

Take your health problem serious. Pills are not the real answer. Changing your diet is the answer. Talk to your doctor about your blood pressure.

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