Half full cans
Last week, I caught a bloody awful cold and was trapped in the house for three days. Really a small problem, and the time off gave me some time to play around with software and poke around wikipedia. By sunday, I was pretty much out of fresh food and not feeling much like cooking anyway, I turned to the metalware in the panty. Progresso clam chowder, that'll do the trick, esp. with some extra clams and a bit of lousiana hot sauce. So I open the can of soup, then the clams, strain the latter, and here's what I find:
Over half the can is just filled with water/clam juice.
Now this is a can of chopped clams from Snow, but in fairness, I found the same thing in a can of Chicken of the Sea's canned clams. And this is getting to be a pet peeve of mine, since I'm finding more and more of nothing in cans and bottles of various types. The last aspirin bottle I bought was 75% volume of air, and 25% volume of aspirin, and the same is true of many vitamins and supplements.
Here's the thing--it's not so much that I'm not getting the product I expect, since my expectations are pretty low when it comes to this kind of thing. Rather, it is the waste that bothers me--this can of clams carries half the clams it could, and that means that there's about a third more metal in the can than is needed, and that the shipping costs are about twice what they could be. That's a lot of energy wasted, oil burned, fuss and muss for no real advantage. It's a shame, really.
Categories: Rants