WHAT YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT

BUT NEVER REALLY 'KNEW'

Now you do!!

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A CANNED HISTORY OF TINNED FOOD

LIFTING THE LID ON A METAL MIRACLE

By Matt Roper

Daily Mirror

WHENEVER we are rushed off our feet and don't have time to cook, it's the first thing we reach for. But spare a thought for the tin can - which, as well as staving off hunger, has helped us beat the French, defeat the Germans and discover new lands.

This week pensioners Les and Beryl Lailey celebrated their golden wedding anniversary by opening a tin of chicken 50 years after they were given it as a wedding present. According to Mr Lailey, 73, from Denton, Manchester, it tasted fine. "It is remarkable that salt was all it took to ensure it was still good to eat 50 years later," he said. "The can certainly did its job." In fact, the tin can is one of the miracles of modern times and has been around for nearly 200 years.

It has preserved food rations for Arctic explorers, carried blood plasma to wounded soldiers and supplied hungry children with orange juice and milk. More than 20 billion cans are produced in Britain each year and the average person uses 142 a year. More than 1.5 million cans of Heinz baked beans are eaten here every day. And it seems we have Napoleon to thank for it. As the French army pushed into Russia during the Napoleonic wars, they suffered more casualties from scurvy, malnutrition and starvation than from enemy muskets. Napoleon offered a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could find a way of pre-serving food to feed soldiers better.

Nicolas Appert, an obscure candy-maker, brewer and baker, took up the challenge. He had a theory that if fresh foods were put in airtight containers and sufficient heat applied, they would keep. Appert packed foods in bottles, corked them and submerged them in boiling water. Without realising it, he was sterilising them, stopping bacterial spoilage. After 14 years of experimentation he won the prize - handed to him by the Emperor.

The discovery was a military secret which Napoleon believed would help defeat his greatest enemy, the British. Luckily for us, the secret was leaked and by 1810 Englishman Peter Durance had taken the process a step further and sealed food in tin-plated, wrought iron containers. The soldiers who won the Battle of Waterloo five years later were nourished with the first tin cans. But they were very thick and almost impossible to open without a hammer and chisel. Soldiers used knives, bayonets or even rocks, sometimes suffering serious injuries.

It wasn't until 1858 that the can opener was invented and having a plate of veg no longer meant risking chopping your leg off. Still, today more than 2,000 people in Britain a year cut their fingers badly when opening cans. The first commercial canning factory here was opened by Bryan Durkin and John Hall in 1812. The cans were expensive because a good tinsmith could produce only six to 10 a day. But then came automated production lines that produced around six every hour.

Canned dog food appeared in 1922, canned beer in 1935. The electric can opener arrived in 1931.  

As more of the world was explored the demand for canned food grew. Thomas Kensett, who emigrated to the US, set up the first American cannery for oysters, meats, fruit and vegetables in New York in 1812. Prospectors panning for gold in the 1849 Gold Rush, travellers heading west and explorers searching for the North West Passage all took the new food with them. 

by British naval officer William Parry on his pioneering voyage to the Arctic in 1824. And after the American Civil War soldiers and sailors returning home praised the tinned rations that had kept them fed. A century later the tin can helped us win another war. More than 15 million cans of Spam luncheon meat were downed by Allied soldiers every week, and it also went to the starving Russian armies. Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote: "Without Spam we wouldn't have been able to feed our army."

cheese, which can be stored for years. Tinned baked beans were first produced in America in the late 19th century and in Britain in 1928 by the American Heinz firm. Today's cans are made of 100 per cent recyclable steel in hi-tech factories at speeds of up to 1,500 cans a minute. A steel can is 40 per cent lighter than it was 30 years ago. But the process has hardly changed. Packed in airtight containers, the food is heated under steam pressure temperatures of up to 121 deg C to destroy micro-organisms. No preservatives are needed. In the can, it keeps its quality for more than two years and is safe to eat for many more, although the texture and colour may change. In fact, despite the best-before date, the food has an almost indefinite shelf life if kept at moderate temperatures. Food canned more than 100 years ago and recovered from sunken ships can still be biologically safe to eat. 

Tinned grub is more nutritious than you may think. It keeps nutrients and vitamins in, keeps impurities out and can even be healthier than buying fresh. Canned carrots and canned tomatoes are higher in lycopene, which cuts the risk of cancer, than their fresh counterparts. Canned apricots, peaches, pumpkin and spinach are all high in carotenes, which protect the body's cells. And some varieties of canned fish have more calcium than freshly cooked fish. So the next time you twist open a can of beans, remember how much it's done for you and me.

Something to frighten your Grandkids with;-

From the Daily Mirror 17 January 2006 

DEAD AT 20........

THE BOY WHO ONLY ATE CHIPS AND TOAST, SCOTT KILLED BY JUNK DIET
By Jeremy Armstrong 

SCOTT Martin's distraught mum Margaret told how she desperately tried to wean her son off his fatal diet of chips, toast and baked beans. The 56-year-old said he even defied medical experts to keep up his love of junk food. The bizarre diet led to his death at 20 from liver disease and bleeding caused by malnutrition. Margaret added: "He was fine when he was younger. I could get him to eat properly. But as he grew older he ended up with just toast, beans, chips and the odd tin of spaghetti. He hardly ate any fruit."

Scott's diet was so bad it caused liver cirrhosis - a condition normally associated with heavy drinkers.He was told a transplant could save him but he was too frightened to have the operation and carried on eating his favourite McDonald's French fries, sliced white bread and tinned beans, all high in salt. Scott developed auto-immune hepatitis - where the body's own defence system attacks the liver - which caused thinning of the blood.

The condition got so bad that when he needed three infected teeth removed he was warned he could bleed to death or die from the infection. He had the extraction but surgeons could not stop the bleeding and his heartbroken family could only watch helplessly as his life ebbed away.

Scott's sister Gail Fairweather helped care for him in his final months when he was so weak he was confined to a wheelchair. The mum-of-six said: "In a short time he had gone from being a normal fit, healthy lad to someone who could barely get across the room. Scott began to feel ill last year. In May he was seen by doctors, suffering what we thought was the flu. "He was tired all the time and could not walk far. He would get out of breath quickly. The doctors sent him to see a specialist. "The specialist found he had cirrhosis of the liver.

We were baffled because Scott was not a drinker. He did not go to pubs, he was a real home boy. But we found out cirrhosis could be caused by bad diet and malnutrition. "There were only a few things he would eat, McDonald's chips were his favourite. "He would eat toast but only from sliced white Danish bread with a thin spreading of Lurpak butter. He would eat baked beans but only now and then. "He was always like that, from when he was little. Finding stuff he'd eat was a struggle."

Childminder Gail, 32, said Scott was terrified of having a transplant and decided to go on medication, against the advice of doctors. She added: "He would not consent to one.”The medication was not making him any better. He get very weak. For the last six months of his life he was in a wheelchair. "He saw a dietician and she gave him loads of nutritional drinks but he did not like them."

Scott, who lived with his mum and two sisters in Whitburn, Sunderland, was buried last week. Margaret said: "The hardest thing is that he was so young. I feel I have been robbed of my little boy. He just did not deserve to die like that. It was terrible."

Patrick Holford, founder of The Institute for Optimum Nutrition, said Scott's diet was "a recipe for death". He added: "A processed and refined foods diet can lead to an early grave. Young people are at a vital stage where a good diet is a must."

AUTHENTIC ENGLISH CHIPS

INGREDIENTS:

Potatoes, (bigguns)

A deep fat fryer, preferably a beef fat fry but you could use a lesser oil-based fry if you don't want true English Authenticity.

PROCEDURE:

Cut your potatoes into thick 1/2 inch by 4 inch slices.

Dunk them in the frier and fry until they are just about to colour up, then take them out and allow them to  completely cool.

Once they are cool and your oil is hot again, dunk the potatoes back in and fry until they are golden brown. Serve with salt and malt-vinegar.

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FACTS AND TRIVIA

The potato is about 80% water and 20% solids.

It is grown in around 125 countries around the world, with China producing the most.

The biggest potato was grown in Germany in 1997 and weighed in at 3.2kg.

The world's largest potato chip was produced by the Pringle's Company in Jackson, TN in 1990. It measured 23' X 14.5'

The US has the biggest potato processing industry in the world, followed by the Netherlands, Canada and Germany.

The biggest potato consumers in Europe are the Portuguese, the Irish and the British.

An 8-ounce baked or boiled potato has only about 150 calories.

In 1995 potatoes were flown into space on board the space shuttle Columbia. It was the first time food was grown in space.

Potatoes grow underground, but are actually swollen stems, not roots.

The average American eats about 134 lbs of potatoes per year while Germans eat about twice as much.

In Britain during the second World War, fish and chips (French fries) was the only food not to be rationed.

In 1974, an Englishman named Eric Jenkins grew 370 lbs of potatoes from one plant.

Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for introducing French fries to America when he served them at a White House dinner.

They were later described in the UK in 1854 by a chef who published a recipe that involved thin strips of potato fried in oil.

Louis XVI of France wore potato blossoms in his buttonhole.

The sweet potato belongs in the same family as the morning glory and is not a relative of the potato. The Spanish who brought sweet potatoes back from the West Indies called them by their native name batatas.

When white potatoes (papas) were introduced into Spain some years later, some people thought they were related. Soon papas were renamed patatas, but both were translated into the English as potato.

The potato skin changes its chemical structure after it is harvested. The outer layers thicken and harden, and their cells are converted to the same substance that is found in bottle cork.

 

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A VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM

THE SUNDAY TIMES

The Sunday Times December 11, 2005

Sex, please — we're British

Thousands of British women willingly surrendered to the charms of American GIs throughout the Second World War. But there were unforeseen consequences to their reckless passion. Report by Christopher Hudson. 

A 1945 health poster highlights the spread of VD. By 1943 VD cases among GIs in Britain had tripled. London, early spring, 1944. It is late at night, and the wartime blackout is in force. No vehicles are moving in the darkness. Most Londoners are asleep at home or in bomb shelters — but in the heart of the capital, Piccadilly Circus seethes with furtive nocturnal life.  The statue of Eros has been taken down for protection, but his spirit rules. American GIs are pouring out of West End clubs and bars, joyous, tipsy and looking for sex.

On every corner the girls are waiting for them.  They congregate at the bottom of Shaftesbury Avenue, near the Rainbow Club for American servicemen; they mass at the entrance to the Underground and walk up from the all-night Lyons Corner House, keeping on the move so the police won't book them for soliciting.

In the streets near Mayfair, elegant women in furs await officer clientele. The soldiers, their cigarettes glowing in the dark, loiter in shop doorways. The girls pause. They are carrying matches or pencil torches, and flash them on their faces before lowering them to illuminate their stockinged legs and ankles on high heels. A deal is struck at a rate of £3 or £4 (a huge sum in today's money), and then it all happens quickly, up against a doorway, the GI's greatcoat covering them both — after which the prowl begins again, four or five times a night.

The 1960s generation likes to believe that it was the first to have remembered something their elders had forgotten — the joys of sex. Recent discoveries in the archives prove them misguided. Well before the Beatles' first LP, the home front during the last three years of the Second World War saw the greatest sexual free-for-all in living memory. It wasn't so much the "Piccadilly Warriors", as the local prostitutes were dubbed sardonically, but thousands of young British women, some of them wives of servicemen fighting abroad, who found the vast army of GIs billeted here in the run-up to the invasion of France completely irresistible. 

The jokes and catchphrases of the time say it all. "Heard about the new utility knickers? One Yank and they're off." The army girls, the ATS, were known as "officers' groundsheets". With their unfeminine uniforms and khaki bloomers, they were far less popular than the much-envied WAAF girls in their dashing air-force kit, who were known as "pilots' cockpits" because of their access to airmen, all of whom were heroes after the Battle of Britain. Nor did the ATS match up to the more exclusive Wrens of the Royal Navy in their smart navy blue. "Up with the lark and to bed with a Wren" was the well-known crack. 

On official social visits to ships of the Royal Navy, Wrens were inspected to check that they were wearing special-issue black knickers with stout elastic at the waist and knee. As for the Women's Land Army, its motto "Back to the Land" became "Backs to the Land" when the GIs arrived. Under a regulation known as Paragraph 11, servicewomen who got pregnant were demobbed and could not re-enlist. So any woman wanting a quick release could stand outside the men's sleeping quarters at night and yell "Paragraph 11!" whereupon every effort would be made to oblige her.

Even so, venereal disease (VD) and illegitimate birth rates in the women's armed forces were much lower, and sometimes half their equivalent in the civilian population. The statistics are astounding. In pre-war Britain most petitions for divorce alleging adultery were filed by women by the end of the war two out of every three divorce applications were filed by husbands against their wives, and there were five times as many divorce petitions in 1945 as there were in 1939. 

Not unconnected is the fact that, of the 5.3m British infants delivered between 1939 and 1945, more than one-third were illegitimate. Their mothers belonged to every age group and every section of society. A wartime survey in Birmingham found that around one-third of all illegitimate births were to married women. This would be a conservative figure, given that any child born to a married woman was deemed to be legitimate unless the mother chose to register it otherwise. The authorities were appalled. As we now know from a fascinating cache of documents that were declassified last month from the National Archives in Kew, dismay was registered throughout Whitehall, all the way to the office of the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. 

Ministers were concerned that all this sexual activity, and the upsurge in VD, would damage Britain's image abroad. Besides endangering the transatlantic alliance, it could present the Germans with a propaganda coup, allowing them to portray Britain as a decadent nation in which "immoral women" preyed on unwary American soldiers. The Scotland Yard files reveal US Army chiefs were so concerned about the pestering of their troops by "loose women" that a series of high-level meetings had to be held to defuse the issue. 

What got them going was an article in the Sunday Pictorial from August 1942 called The Spider's Web of Vice! It describes dens of vice in which flashy-looking men with heavy rings on flabby fingers connived to fleece innocent young servicemen far from home, "pretty girls whose attempts to look demure don't conceal what they are there for", and "pale dissolute Mayfairites whom the call-up hasn't combed out". "The mile of vice around Piccadilly Circus is a disgrace to the rest of Britain," it concludes. At the top of the page, an anonymous Whitehall hand has scribbled in ink to Scotland Yard: "What are you doing about this?"

There was little that the Metropolitan police felt it could do. In 1941 the US authorities had pushed through draconian legislation to check prostitution and VD. Red-light districts were closed down; a 1941 act made any form of prostitution illegal within "reasonable distance" of US military installations. 

The US legislature had recently permitted the authorities to compulsorily examine and treat VD suspects. But British law remained far more considerate of personal privacy. Brothels were illegal, but the transmission of VD was not a crime, nor was prostitution, unless it caused a public nuisance.  Joan Wyndham chuckled when I mentioned the dens of vice. "We should have been so lucky," she said. Living in Chelsea, with a painter's studio nearby, she was 18 when the war started. 

During the 1939 "phoney war", she spent hours bandaging healthy limbs for practice in a huge converted hospital nearby; when the bombs began falling, she was bandaging real victims. "You didn't know what you were going to lose first, your life or your virginity, but I didn't think I could possibly be killed," she said. "My mother had a bomb shelter on the lawn. I wrote my diary in a corner; we took along plenty to drink and talked about food until the all-clear." After Joan had finished her hospital shift she would go dancing and drinking. 

In 1941 their house took a direct hit, and her mother moved into a one-bedroom flat with her female lover, "who must have had to sleep in the bath". Rather than stay with them, Joan became a squadron officer with the WAAF. On her 48-hour leaves, she went overnight by train to parties at her studio. Before the war, most people had never heard of VD. Those who had, like Joan, were phlegmatic about it. "I was much more worried about getting pregnant," she said. 

Almost 9 out of 10 parents didn't talk about sex to their children, any more than their own parents had talked to them. As a result, many young people were ignorant of the facts of life. The BBC was not about to enlighten them. Its first director-general, Lord Reith, did not allow any divorced person to work for the corporation. 

Meanwhile, churches preached that fornication was a sin. "Promiscuous" girls, many of whom had become pregnant through sheer ignorance, could still be dispatched to the workhouse to have their babies, or be locked away in an asylum under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Sex-education books insisted on chastity before marriage. As for the sex, a 1921 manual explained reproduction through an illustrated discussion of "the male and female parts in primrose and vegetable marrow". 

The climate of fear this fostered led to pitiful misconceptions. Some girls believed they could get pregnant by kissing a boy or by sitting on a lavatory seat after one had sat there. Often, menstruation came as a terrible shock and increased a young woman's feeling of sinfulness. Sex education in most schools was minimal, and any sexual contact between boys and girls was considered a disgrace, to be punished. 

Doctors and clergymen preached that masturbation could lead to blindness, impotence, epilepsy, madness. All this made courtship a very chaste affair before the war. Parents had more say than ever before — or since — over where the couple went, when they got home, whether they should get engaged and where they would be married, in what was inevitably a white wedding.  Even when they went to work, curfews applied. Employers tended to enforce strict rules about getting home by 9pm, and landladies took a dim view of suitors coming to the house. 

These taboos were overturned after the GIs (eventually numbering 1.5m) started arriving in 1942, at the same time that British men of call-up age left the family home to fight overseas. What Sigmund Freud called "war aphrodisia" took hold of young women who now had only their mothers to keep them in line.

After three years of Blitz, blackouts and austerity, there suddenly appeared these tall, confident, clean-cut Yanks. GIs had glamour and style; they were like a burst of colour in a black-and-white film. And they had money, plenty of it. At a time when a smallish slab of butter had to last British households a month, they dispensed presents with instant sex appeal: chocolates, nylon stockings, cigarettes, scented soap and luxury foods from their military stores. Above all, they dispensed themselves.

HONEST TO GOODNESS