We Never Knew Cans Could Be This Fascinating

Before we let National Canned Food Month slip into the oblivion it so richly deserves, here are a few fun facts from the Canned Food Information Council and the Canned Food Promotion Service:

Nearly 1,500 different food items are available in cans, in both the dented and popular undented versions.

Frenchman Nicolas Appert invented the canning process (using bottles, actually), winning a 12,000-franc prize offered by Napoleon to anyone who could figure out how to preserve food for his troops. (Napoleon, of course, kept his snacks inside his vest.)

Canned foods have a shelf life of two years or more, longer than most modern celebrities.

Most “tin” cans are actually 99.75 percent steel, with a sheer tin coating.

Enough cans were recycled in 1993 to build 122 copies of Cleveland’s new baseball stadium, Jacobs Field. Which certainly would spread the picket lines a little thin.

Bagel calls

So you’re a pig for bagels? Now you can be a guinea pig for bagels.

Continental Baking Co. is test marketing its individually wrapped Braun’s Bagels in Spokane and 17 other cities in the Detroit, Salt Lake City, Hartford, Conn. and Portland (that’s us) market areas.

Based on an onion version we sampled, Braun’s (3 ounces, 200 calories, 1 gram of fat) seems to strike a balance between the breadiness that’s so trendy in today’s bagel world and a more traditional denseness. (Taste tip: the texture is greatly improved with the wrapper removed.)

Out of their shells

Attention, all you grown-up goober fetishists: the Adult Peanut Butter Lovers’ Fan Club wants you to know that it’s OK to come out of the closet.

Really, there are lots of people like you. Some of them even entered the club’s recent recipe contest, and 10 of them won - with everything from Tofu Peanut Say Rolls to Peanut Butter and Honey Coated Rabbit.

For a free brochure of the winning recipes, send a stamped, selfaddressed, business-sized envelope to: Recipe Contest Brochure, Adult Peanut Butter Lovers’ Fan Club, 1950 North Park Place, Suite 525, Atlanta, GA 30339.

Bater knows best

Our nomination for snappy supermarket coupon comes from the Chinese food folks at Sun Luck, who offer 40 cents off on “any item that doesn’t rhyme with bater bestnuts.”

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