Steak Vegetables
Food · Other · Food, Typed Supps
Convenient and safe for years on a shelf, but diluted with sauce and salted to make up for it.
Stage by stage
- Intake (Pre-softened by retorting): Sterilisation in the sealed can has already broken down the tissue, so there is almost nothing to chew.
- Stomach (Denatured protein digests fast): Fully denatured meat protein is easy to digest, though there is only 4.4g of it per 100g.
- Small intestine (Sodium and nutrients absorbed): Sodium is absorbed completely; beta-carotene survives the heat while vitamin C does not.
- Circulation (Sodium load managed): The kidneys excrete the sodium; a whole can supplies roughly two-thirds of the WHO daily limit.
Time to effect
- Years: No acute effect; the relevant timescale is the blood pressure effect of habitual sodium intake.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Halal, Kosher, Keto, Low-FODMAP.
Satiety
166 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — high. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
99.5 kg CO2e and 1451 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Beef (beef herd)" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Mid — roughly £4 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 62
- Protein: 4.4g
- Carbohydrate: 6.2g
- of which sugars: 1.8g
- Fat: 1.9g
- of which saturated: 0.9g
- Fibre: 1.2g
- Sodium: 320mg
Food vs. supplement
Not applicable. Compare it with cooking the same dish yourself, where the meat-to-sauce ratio and the salt are under your control, or with going without a hot meal at all, which is often the real alternative.
Kitchen tip
Use it as a base, not a meal. A handful of frozen vegetables and an unsalted grain underneath halves the sodium per mouthful and adds back fibre and vitamin C.
Common myth
"Canned food has had all the nutrition cooked out of it." In reality: Vitamin C and thiamin are largely destroyed, but minerals are untouched, protein quality holds up, and beta-carotene actually becomes more available with heat. The genuine drawbacks of this product are that it is mostly sauce, so protein per 100g is low, and that it is salted heavily to compensate.
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