When buying any product, you can easily check their freshness and quality by appearance. The quality of the products purchased in canned form is very difficult to assess, since they are sold in sealed packaging. So by what criteria is it safe to say that a canned product is usable?
Instructions
Step 1
First of all, meat, fish, vegetables and fruits sold in the form of canned food are made according to special technologies and standards approved back in Soviet times. These requirements are clearly regulated by law and are carefully spelled out in the manufacturing instructions.
Step 2
The fact that the product is made according to GOST standards is necessarily indicated on the can with canned food, where there is additionally information about their composition, place of production and the name of the manufacturer. Some canned food manufacturers do not comply with current standards and therefore include vegetable proteins in canned foods, such as soy meat in stew, or other additives. Such canned food is prepared according to the TU standards, which should be written on the label of the can with the product.
Step 3
In addition, you should carefully examine the container in which canned food is sold. If it is a glass jar, then it should be without a single crack, there should be no traces of rust on the lid and the bottom of the jar should be slightly concave outward. Manufacturers often mark the shelf life of the product at the bottom of the glass jar. No liquid should come out of the can upside down. The appearance of the product in such jars should be uniform, without cloudy sediment and foreign objects inside.
Step 4
If you purchase canned food in an iron can, you need to carefully examine it. The label must indicate the complete composition of the content and specify the standards for the product, the place of its production. By the date of production, it is possible to draw a conclusion about the raw material from which the canned product is made. For example, if a jar of green peas has a production date in January, then the product is made from dried or frozen raw materials. The same goes for the sale of canned fish, meat and mushrooms.
Step 5
The bottoms of metal cans should be concave inward and there should be no traces of rust on them. If you ate such a container, turn it over or shake it, liquid should not flow. If a meat product is packed in an iron can, for example, a stew, then when it is shaken, there should be no sounds similar to gurgling inside. Otherwise, there is less meat than that declared by the manufacturer (according to standards, at least 90% of the content).
Step 6
Iron cans are sometimes affixed with the manufacturer's seal, which is usually the case in older canning factories. However, the absence of such a seal cannot indicate a poor quality of the product.
Step 7
On the lid of a canned product, information on the assortment number and the individual code of the enterprise where it is produced must be indicated. It is very important to study the shelf life of canned foods. Depending on the content inside the jars, this information is always different.
Step 8
If the product is made from fruits or vegetables of irregular shape, with cracks in the shell and foreign impurities in the jar, then it is not usable. The same can be said about canned fish and meat, which should contain raw materials of a uniform shape, not crumble or float in a large amount of liquid.
