Is the Age Of The Tin Can over?
The older generations of this nation were raised on foods from tin cans. Tin cans were made of steel, but were “tinned” on the interior with a very thin layer of the tin metal (Tin or Sn) which is a white or gray non-reactive soft metal used to protect the interior of the metal can from food acids and the consumer from chemically altered foods. Yes the tin did slowly dissolve and react to some extent with food but as it did it helped to maintain food color and perhaps texture.
In the tin can age everyone had a “can opener” ready at hand, to open that can of baked beans, condensed milk, or a wide variety of soups, meats, scrapple, “Polish” cooked hams, and nutritious stews.
A summer beach party on the Jersey Shore or Long Island’s Atlantic beach was not much fun without a fire and a cook-out with baked beans and frankfurters on a stick. The fire was fueled with sundrenched, dry and sandy drift wood. The baked beans were cooked right in their tin cans. The cans with the beans bubbling inside, were arrayed along the upwind side of the fire. The top of each of the raggedly opened bean cans (opened often with the ministrations of a sturdy folding knife) was bent back to expose the beans and to act as “handle” for removal after the beans were heated. The “dogs” were speared onto long thin sticks, cut from drift wood branches. Each beach goer had one to spear their frank and broil it to their desired crispiness. Ahh… I can smell smoke and the cooked beans, feel the warm land breeze on my face and almost see my old friends in the red glow of the blazing beach fire right now.
In this author’s childhood, the tin can was king. In my grandfather’s rural Long Island homestead of the 1950s, there were no prepared foods, no frozen foods, no plastic containers, and no refrigeration. The only cold things were found in an old brass and wood framed ice box, where a few food items —a bottle of milk, a roughly pried- open can of evaporated milk, a tub of butter, and an old Campbell soup can half full of hard bacon drippings. In the coldest spot a cut of meat or fish lay wrapped in butcher paper— laying on top of the big block of blue-gray ice, draped in damp newspapers.
Gramma’s pantry, was packed full with tin cans with colorful pictures of tomatoes, vegetables, green beans, spinach, fruits and the famous red and yellow crest of the Del Monte company. My favorites were the fruit cocktail, the pears in syrup, and especially, the big sweet cling peaches each with a bright red clingy part close to the pit, all in thick syrup. Kids loved that syrup and sweet fruit. The rest of the pantry held a bag flour, a bag of green coffee beans, a slab of bacon draped in muslin, a dusty dark box of Long Island potatoes, and yellow onions and a few dried herbs. Life and foods were much simpler then.
Once they served the good purpose of protecting and delivering nutritious food, the containers—tin cans—were not just tossed into a trash barrel. Empty tin cans had a life of their own after they were opened and their contents consumed.
Almost everyone saved tin cans. They were ready for use for dry storage as soon as they were emptied. Granpa’s shed had a whole wall of rough cut wood shelves with old cans each filled with some useful saved items. Like the tin cans themselves, old nails, rusted or bent, wood screws, old hinges, scraps of wrought iron, nuts and bolts of various sizes, fish hooks, lead fish weights, were all saved in the salvaged cans.
Gifted tinkerers could use tin snips to cut the tin cans open, flatten them and make other useful items. Grandpa made a perfectly lovely rooster-shaped wind vane for the top of the barn, and a broom-dust scoop for grandma. As a youngster I made a candle holder, out of two tin cans with the upper part punched full of holes. So at night the candle light shone through.
Yesterday’s newspaper (7/2/25) revealed that the Del Monte Food Company filed for bankruptcy (Chapter 11). Del Monte, the “tin can grocery” giant was first seen on shelves in Monterey California in 1886. From that time the fruit and vegetable giant, with its motto: “the gold standard of goodness” kept American families fed and its business thriving for 135 years. With nearly $3 billion in assets, in companies such as Contadina, Kitchen basics, College Inn, and S&W this former giant of groceries is in financial trouble that appears can only be solved by restructuring its debt. What are its problems?
Since 2017 when the company was sold to Nutri Asia, the old US firm has stumbled. The new owners seem to ignore its long US history, its devoted workforce and look only to strip its components apart for sale and profit.
But the truth is that Del Monte has significant debt. Today Del Monte debt service has risen as a result of recent higher much interest rates installed to control inflation. The fall in sales during the pandemic led to unsold inventory and higher storage costs. The impact of high inflation during the Biden era also altered consumer spending habits, encouraging consumers to abandon Del Monte’s premium canned foods for cheaper “house brands”. The rising price of steel (for cans) perhaps due to Trump tariff regulations will bring steel making home but add to costs and decrease profits for Del Monte.
But most importantly it is the unrelenting shift of consumer demand away from canned foods. Consumers use less and less tinned foods..relying more on: “take out”, prepared and “ready to eat”—just heat and eat- packaged products, as well as vast quantities and variety of frozen foods. And as well, modern consumers have become advocates of fresh produce and meats. Today the tin can is passe’!
The tin can’s ability to keep food nutritious and water potable almost indefinitely and with little special attention recommends it for special purposes. Those who enjoy the more rustic life of camping know of its practicality on a camping trip. (Though not for backpackers!) Then too survivalists pack away tons of canned goods underground for the uncertain future. So who knows?
Future archeologists will surely find artifacts of our era. No doubt there will be vast quantities of flattened and rusted cans in some historic archeological dig of the future, on the outskirts of long-gone urbanized areas. The walls of these dig pits will feature thin reddish colored soil horizons—or occupation levels marked by iron rust stains. Samples of the soil will reveal evidence of the element Tin in soil samples. This test will confirm that the horizon as a definitive chronomarker for the “Age of the Tin Can”. The “Can Age” will be an era dated by these future archeologists from about the late 19th Century to the mid 21st Century (as we would call it).
At a soil level just above the “Age of Cans” these future historic investigators will most likely record massive amounts of aluminum and plastic. These crushed by weight, but still intact and shiny artifacts, often with printed or engraved images and hieroglyphs of a bygone era will serve the future historians as chronomarkers for the Age of the Aluminum Can. Much of that soil level will likely be removed and disappear as a result of being exploited by workers extracting aluminum (rare in the future) and plastic from the soil.
Above that level? ………”unknown… radioactive too dangerous— can-not access data”.
