How bad is tinned (canned) fruit?

[Mashi]

Been having a hard time the past couple of weeks in getting good, ripe fruit for DS.  Just everything out of season at the moment!

DH bought tinned peaches instead of fresh ones as the fresh ones were very very unripe and the ones we bough like that last week were just awful.  He got them packed in juice (pineapple juice) not syrup, said there weren't any packed in their own juice or in water.

I drained them well and rinsed them to get all of the juice off, and am wondering, really, how bad it is to use tinned fruit instead of fresh for DS's meals?

Anyone know?

[Tansy]

Fresh is definitely best when it comes to fruit and vegetables however i know how hard it is to always use fresh produce. I think canned fruit is ok if used occaisionally and rinsed well (especially if in juice). Of course, there will definitely be less nutrients than fresh but it's better than nothing. Another option which may be healthier is to buy the plastic containers of "tinned" fruit rather than the tinned version (should be in same section as tinned fruit). HTH

[KathrynK]

My HV says absolutely fine, so does Annabel Karmel and she is my weaning guru  
As long as they are in juice, not syrup, like you said

Good tinned fruits to use are peaches, pears, fruit cocktail (to practise picking small things up & self feeding although take the whole grapes out!), and prunes
Don't buy tinned apples, they are revolting, and tinned raspberries just don't work either, bleurgh. Although tinned raspberries work when poured over a meringue nest and then covered in cream, mmm  

Alex had half a big tin of peaches whizzed in the blender for breakfast today- greedy piggy

[Mashi]

Oh good, glad to hear others are doing/have done it. I felt bad as he's only ever had fresh produce and fresh organic meat but it's just near impossible to get a good variety of RIPE fruit at this time of the year...roll on spring!

[~emmalou~]

My ds and dd love their tinned peaches and tinned pears. Adore them! X

[rinajack]

Tinned apricot is also good.  I only use the tinned apple for baking.  Tinned pineapple is yummy too.

The dietician/nutritionist at the feeding clinic we had to take DS to told us that tinned/canned in natural juice is sometimes BETTER than "fresh" depending on just how fresh it actually is when it reaches you. My kids now have tinned fruit most days (as well as fresh fruit).

As for unripe fruit - all stone fruits will continue to ripen after picking - just leave them out on the bench for several days (or even longer, you know what you want them to be like).  Pears are another one that fit this bill, as are bananas.

So I suggest you buy tinned to have in the cupboard for when the fresh aren't ready, but buy fresh and put them in a fruit bowl to ripen, and then use htem when they are ready.  Bananas make everthing ripen faster too (and I think if you put banana and other fruit in a brown paper bag together it is faster still).

[mum101]

Nothing more annoying than buying a kiwi fruit and sitting in a bowl for a week until it ripens.    It's like it's teasing me!

Choice, a consumer rights group has a write up about fresh versus canned or frozen. They are very no-nonsense!

Choice say "Canned vegetables and fruit also retain most of their original nutrients. They have less vitamin C, but the levels of dietary fibre, carotene and folate, for example, aren’t much affected by the canning process."

http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=105360&catId=100286&tid=100008&p=1&title=Fresh+fruit+and+veg

I think the thing with Vitamin C is that it is generally quite easy to meet our vitamin C needs as it's often in things.

It's a good standby for sure, i buy canned fruit whenever it's on sale and it's for emergencies if I run out of fruit and also for a bit of variety for the kids. We freeze a lot of our own raspberries and peaches each summer too. Delicious! The peaches I simmer for a minute before freezing

[maggieruth]

i have heard that tinned tomatoes are acutally BETTER than fresh!
x

[Mashi]

Ya, that's one of the things we were going on - that tinned fruit is prob like frozen veg in that it's packed right when it's picked.  Yep, DS gets LOADS of vit C so no worries with that one.

Getting fruit a full week in advance and leaving it to ripen isn't really an option in the tiniest house in the world where there is limited space to even keep the food we're going to eat this week, let along fine 4 square inches of SPARE space! It also means menu planning TWO weeks in advance - one is hard enough!

[rinajack]

LOL - any room on top of your fridge?

And as your lo gets older and starts to demand food randomly, you will find more benefit in having stuff the comes available iykwim....as babies I didn't do that either, but these days the only snacks they might demand in a day could be fruit, another day something else - I like to have as much available as possible.

[Mashi]

LOL - any room on top of your fridge?

Only if we get rid of the three boxes of cereal, loaf of bread, massive fruit bowl and tins of formula that are already kept up there! LOL.  Seriously - smallest kitchen in the world.

Anyway, thanks all, got the reassurance that I needed!