Nutritional value of tinned fruit?

[cathncait]

What does everyone think? I tend to give dd (9 months) tinned fruit because its soft and easy to get and keep. She won't eat banana but has the odd melon..but it just doesn't keep well enough.
Does the fruit lose its vitamins in the 'tinning' procedure?

I give mine tinned fruit in juice. It's a better snack than crisps or biscuits!

Is the juice not full of sugar, though?

Not added sugar, just natural fruit sugars which would be in ordinary fruit anyway.

I was interested in the answer to this too so I looked it up and it appears there is little or no difference in the nutritional value of tinned vs fresh fruit. There's an article here

I never thought it would be, that's excellent to know, roll on pears and custard for dessert tonight!
Thanks WWW

Cooooool!

Something that is convenient AND nutritional AND delicious! How rare is that!?!?!

I've just, in fact, written an article on freshness and foods, and tinning is pretty damn good a lot of the time, as long as it's not in salt/sugar. Can't do links, unfortunately, but the nutritionists seem agreed on this. Ditto frozen stuff. Go for it, honestly.

motherinferior, has that been published yet? I seem to recall a very recent article somewhere which revisits some of the info in WWW's link and endorses it further. Good news for those of us who rely on tinned sweetcorn to get some fibre/betacarotene into our little darlings.

No, I literally just sent it off yesterday. It's for Red, should be in I think in the August issue (so will hit shelves as I give birth, no doubt); might be Sept, I always get confused and quite frankly at the time the main priority was getting the damn thing finished! I was actually commmissioned to write about 'how fresh is the food we eat', and I think the info about freezing/tinning is not quite what was expected...

Food Research Institute has a leaflet at
www.ifr.ac.uk/public/FoodInfoSheets/cans.htm

and WHO has recently said freezing is a major advance in public health...

also tinned/frozen stuff counts towards the five a day target. although frozen peas only count once. only one juice counts as well. hey, at this rate we'll start feeling LESS guilty as mums - is this a first?

mumsnet mums come up with the goods again! I was just about to write to 'notes and queries' about the different nutritive value of fresh/frozen and tinned. Good work .Thanks.

Thanks motherinferior. Dh and I are currently disputing the value of frozen veg. I got sick of buying fresh and throwing it out so I have now started buying frozen but he disputes it is as healthy and sometimes even better. I tried to explain that they snap freeze a lot of vegetables to retain their nutritional value. His argument is based purely on the fact that he prefers fresh veg to frozen but tries to justify it by saying that no matter what anyone says he is right. You can guess the argument we had over that can't you.

What is Red. Is that a magazine as I would like to buy that in August so I can show him.

Red is a magazine aimed at 30-something year old women..... am I right?

I must by one too. Could you remind us nearer the time?

Will do best, gestation permitting. No doubt commissioning ed will let me know which issue it's for, as well. Can't face approaching them today; am dead knackered, vastly pregnant and inclined to throw 'sickie' adn go back to bed.

Glad to be of use. I seem to write quite a bit about food and healthy eating at the moment (have a bit in the current issue about eating/weight loss). Tend to get through lots of Ben and Jerry's while I'm doing it, odd that...

Isn't the choice between fresh, frozen and tinned one of texture/taste? For myself, I prefer fresh veges apart from peas and sweetcorn, because some veges eg carrots, beans, change texture considerably (and tinned ones even more so). But since veges are mostly plate decoration to DS and not real food, I figure frozen mix veg are fine. Tinned fruit is a lot sweeter than fresh, even when canned in its own juices - because it's been effectively "cooked". My guess is if you compared calorie content tinned fruit would be higher on a per weight basis. As it is so sweet, DS loves it. However he eats plenty of fresh fruit so I don't tend to open a can unless it's for a special treat. And DH hoovers up vast amounts of fruit so I don't have a problem with it going off - more a problem keeping up with demand!

Sobernow - we're going to be losing our kitchen very soon as we need to rip it out and start again. When the time draws nearer would love to hear more about the adventures (dilemmas) this brings.

So pleased I've found and read all of this tread. Mu life is about to get so much easier. I feel a trip to the pub coming on to celebrate a few extra hours of freedom found!

Well a lot of professionals still say fresh is best; some of it depends on what fruit it actually is though. Make sure you use fruit in natural juice though. Canning can cause loss of some nutrients and sugar in the diet can interfere with absorption of vitamins. However, storage and length of time in shop can affect the vitamin content as well. The main thing is to make sure she has a balanced diet. It would still be a good idea to try her with fresh stuff every now and then though and she if she will eat it

thanks for all the replies. this is great...I'm always wondering if she's getting enough healthy stuff and since she's very happy to eat tinned stuff...now I can be too!
Very informative stuff!

meanmum - not quite on a par with losing the whole kitchen, but we lost our gas cooker recently and had to live for a week without it. It was OK - but only because I had a microwave. If you don't have a microwave yet - I recommend that you get one.