• 5-a-day: To get your 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency advise that all fruit and veg, be they fresh, canned, frozen, dried or juiced, count towards your quota (however, fruit juice can only count as one portion, how ever much you drink).
• Canned and frozen fruit and vegetables provide a cheap, convenient and quick alternative to fresh and can be stored in the cupboard or freezer for use as and when they are needed. There is a lot of stigma attached to canned and frozen products but, as discussed below, they can make a good contribution to a healthy diet.
• According to the British Nutrition Foundation, broadly speaking, the vitamin and mineral content of frozen and canned fruit and vegetables is equivalent to that of fresh products.
• Fruit and veg are usually frozen or canned very soon after harvesting and so the vitamin and mineral content is often preserved.
• Different nutrients are affected to different degrees by food processing. Vitamin C and folic acid are very sensitive and levels may even be lower in raw vegetables that have been stored for a few days before consumption compared with frozen.
• Canned foods also provide similar amounts of vitamins and minerals compared to fresh equivalents, and may also be a good source of fibre. Some losses of vitamin C occur during the canning process but the levels will then remain constant throughout the shelf life of the product.
• Smart Choice canned fruit can be canned in syrup or fruit juice. Fruit juice is lower in sugar than syrup, so is a more healthy option. Even so, fruit juice still contains sugar and so any excess should be drained off where possible. Serve on its own or with a low fat fromage frais or greek yoghurt. Examples of Smart Choice fruit canned in juice are Fruit cocktail, peaches, pear and pineapple. Solid pack apples and rhubarb and Bramley apples are canned in water.

* Canned vegetables may be canned in brine, which contains salt. Some Smart Choice canned vegetables (e.g. Garden peas and carrots) are now preserved in water rather than brine and so the salt content is minimal. Other, such as marrow fat peas, processed peas and mushy peas have had their salt content reduced. Some pulses may still be canned in brine but the salt content can be lowered by draining and rinsing the product under running water. It is planned to remove the salt in pulse products next year.