Canned Food Month

GJKend / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

February is Canned Food Month in the United States.

Canned food is food that has been preserved by the method known as canning, in which the food is processed and then sealed inside an airtight container. Canning can refer to using jars, such as Mason jars, but it is more commonly used to refer to metal cans, such as those made from steel and tin (the latter substance being why canned food is also known as "tinned").

Canned food allows the food so preserved to have a substantially longer shelf life. Even the shelf lives listed on cans may be far under how long the food inside will remain safe to eat; food over 100 years old has been determined to be safe to consume, albeit totally unappetising in taste, look and texture. Canning first properly started at the beginning of the 19th century, but did date back earlier, as a way of supplying troops, and did prove effective. Perhaps the biggest problem was that the can opener was not invented until the middle of the 19th century. Opening cans in the beginning boiled down to stabbing them repeatedly with a knife.