Straight from the can

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Whether it is duck confit or the humble herring in tomato sauce, there is something about canned goods that thrills.

Maybe, it's the anticipation as one presses iron against iron to open the can, those suspenseful moments when one waits as the can is opened, the aroma pervading the air, then takes out the contents and pours them into one’s plate. Or, usually in the case of tomato sauce sardines, when the contents, runny sauce and all, are topped on a plate of steaming hot or comfortably cold rice.

Let’s admit it – it’s one of our guilty trips, especially in the dead of the night and we feel the familiar pangs in our stomachs. Or maybe, even when we do not feel hungry at all – to rummage through the ref, and not finding anything palatable, to go through the pantry and choose which sodium-laden dish it is that one would attack with a plate of rice, oftentimes cold, that we call bahaw.

There is something of the illegal here, like one was breaking some law, well, yes, the law of healthy eating, that the baser side in all of us indulges. I guess that makes the exercise more exciting, this element of the forbidden in what is seemingly a simple manner of eating.

Time was when canned goods were truly wonderful treats when most of them came from abroad, and opening one was like opening a gift. The most famous of these was spam, the Spanish Tome, the Portuguese Mabuti, the Argentine Libby’s. Maybe, the collective cultural experience of our forebears, especially those who went through the world war and knew firsthand how it felt to open a canned good in the air-raid shelter or eat spam after the liberation, has been wired in all of us, so we all have this predilection to like de lata food that is almost genetic.

Never mind if, as health gurus are now pointing out, they are not exactly the healthiest of foods and should be eaten with caution. I am not a nutritionist or doctor, but I can imagine the salt, sugar and other preservatives that go into these foods to make them edible for years inside that tin can.

Too, aside from carrying too many preservatives, these foods are cooked by altering their recipes to compensate for what, I guess, are the chemical reactions that goes on inside the can as it is heated. I don’t think we have the final word yet on what organisms die and are born in this process.

Good Friend L, who runs a preschool, refuses to let her children eat canned food; they can only eat sardines out of glass bottles – a dreary practice, I always tell her, but which she says is her insurance that the kids don’t get a regular dose of lead and who knows what other preservatives. But I think L is a rare breed, she’s the only one I know who consciously avoids canned goods. While her children will surely skip the surfeit of sodium and what have you, I guess they will also miss the pleasure and excitement of eating, with bare hands, Ligo sardines and bahaw, a ritual that has become almost a common Pinoy cultural experience.

From their positions as rare treats, canned goods these days have become symbols of our Third World realities – just check out how many kinds there are in the market and you’ll know how widespread poverty is in our country. Canned goods have become popular choices because, as they say, a little goes a long way – how eight or ten people can feast on a tube of sardines, and feel full afterwards. The trick is to load on rice – a little bit of the viand and a load of rice.

I have no quarrel with this; in fact, like most of you, this is one of my indulgences. But I think there must be some rationalization here, some information drive about the true characters of canned goods and how, abused with regularity, they can lead to epidemic, if it hasn’t yet considering their popularity now.*

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