Host: Janice Vee (JV)

Guests: Philippa Forrester (PF)

JV: Hello everyone, welcome to today's show. I'm Janice Vee. Trying to maintain a balanced diet to ensure a healthy lifestyle isn't always that easy. What nutrients we should be taking, what kind of foods we should be eating in order to obtain those nutrients as well. So in order to ease some of this confusion, broadcaster and journalist, Philippa Forrester, has teamed up with Canned Food UK, to launch 'Everyday Nutrition' to try and highlight the right amount of nutrients we should be having every day and Philippa joins me today in the studio, hi Philippa.

PF: Hi.

JV: So first of all, tell me what the campaign is trying to achieve.

PF: Okay, well first of all the use of the word 'diet'. So often the use of the word 'diet' means what you're not eating. It focuses on all the things you should keep out. This means what we should be eating. All of these things on our wall chart here, which is something that we've developed in association with Anita Bean, who's a nutritionist, to try and make people aware of the things that they should be eating. What foods they can get those from, how convenient it can be if you use canned foods a lot of the time, to get those foods into you; they're normally just there, sitting in your store cupboard, it's just that people aren't aware. So this diet is about the food that you can put in, not the food you having to keep out.

JV: It also looks at convenient cooking.

PF: Convenience and nutrition, that's the key. And for me, personally, when I was asked to come on board with this campaign, if once a week one woman thinks, 'Oh, thanks for that recipe' because it got her out of a tight fix - great, because I'm that woman all the time.

JV: Yes, there's always something in the back of your cupboard that you don't know what to do with.

PF: And I've got two kids and I want them to eat healthily but equally I have to earn a living so I have to be out at work often and I don't have time to cook a marvellous meal every day and sometimes you don't have to.

JV: Yes, just explain the wall chart, what does it highlight? What different types of nutrients we should be having all day.

PF: Really, this is just a quick kind of at-a-glance ... you can keep this just inside your cupboard, where you keep your cans and you might be thinking about, 'Well, I really want to boost my concentration' or 'I really want to boost my energy.' Well to convert food into energy you need riboflavin, so you need to maybe be looking at some canned rice pudding, some asparagus and some macaroni cheese. It just gives you an idea of actually managing your food to tailor it to your needs. So not necessarily eating for two, in my case, it's eating for a good, nutritious pregnancy.

JV: Yes.

PF: There are certain things that I need more of, folic acid being one of them. But in my head, do I remember, especially when pregnant, do I remember where folic acid is? I can remember a few sources; I can just open the cupboard door and go, 'Ooh, some canned broad beans, I've got broad beans, fine. What can I do with those?'

JV: Because it's quite good just to highlight because sometimes you have to go through the back of the label and read it and you also don't have time to do that.

PF: Well no and I have one toddler pulling my trousers down on one side and the other one moaning because his car's broken on the other side and I'm trying to concentrate on the can. You know, you need something really easy sometimes, especially when you're going to be breast-feeding.

JV: Yes, where do you get the wall chart from?

PF: It's free; this is not for profit at all. If you log onto the website and our website is www.cannedfood.co.uk.

JV: Okay, www.cannedfood.co.uk, brilliant. Well there's a question from Pippa actually. She said, 'Do you prepare meals with your kids?' She does and thinks it will help them develop healthy eating habits, 'Do you agree?'

PF: Well I had a driver, just going slightly off the point, the other day. He said, 'Do you drive?' and I said, 'yes' and he said, 'Oh, I didn't think you would' and I said, 'Well, how else do you think I get the kids to school?' He said, 'Yeah, but you're a celebrity!' Same thing, I might be a celebrity but I still have to prepare the children's meals otherwise they will starve!

JV: Do you get the bus?

PF: Do you drive? Do you eat? He assumed I have a chauffeur-driven school run?

JV: Yeah, that would have been quite good actually.

PF: I don't have a chef at home, I have to cook and I have to often cook quick and easy as I said and I love it when the boys are cooking with me because they love nothing more than mucking about and it might take a bit longer on those occasions but generally they're absorbed in the activity of cooking. Things like eggs they love. And I've just found this great recipe for a kind of Spanish omelette, but a vegetarian version. So you make up the Spanish omelette in the same way, but you use a can of butter beans, a can of spinach, put that all in and then put the eggs on top. Well they love breaking eggs. The five year old has just mastered breaking eggs so he's very proud of himself. And then the two year old can mix them up; they can do that.

JV: Grate some cheese.

PF: Absolutely, they can do that; eat half of it before we get it onto the top of the omelette.

JV: Because a lot of people wouldn't actually think of canned food to feed their kids with but in actual fact it has a lot of nutrients in which is kind of right from the source. You know, it's either been heated up or it's ...

PF: Absolutely, well with canned foods generally, I mean often I buy some vegetables and then I haven't had time to prepare them and they're sitting in the bottom of the fridge. And we're not saying, 'Don't have fresh vegetables.' It's entirely the opposite, we're saying, 'Have both.' But sometimes canned foods can be actually fresher because they're canned quickly, when the vegetable or the fruit is still fresh

JV: Yeah.

PF: I'm not always that quick. I might have been to the shop a week before to buy my carrots and they're still sitting there, I'm using them up.

JV: Exactly.

PF: And they lose a lot of nutrients in that time so sometimes canned foods can actually be more nutritious.

JV: You teamed up with Anita Bean actually on this whole project. Did you learn anything new about canned foods while you were doing all this?

PF: Yeah, I had more inspiration I think. There were things that I hadn't really thought about. I had been a particular bean user. Canned beans for me are perfectly great ingredients because they're convenient. You don't have to think about soaking them for twelve hours like you do with the dried versions; got lots of proteins, lentils - got lots of amino acids. So I was using all of those things as a kind of complement to the other things, the things that I had in my fridge and the frozen things that I had. What Anita has done is come up with some really smashing fruit recipes that I hadn't thought about and fruit out of season is always so expensive. So smoothies using canned raspberries maybe, canned coconut milk in the smoothies, gorgeous.

JV: And you don't have to have the ones that are in the syrup as well because obviously that can be canned just in its own juice.

PF: No, you can just have the juice, fruit juice. I mean, canned foods have come a long way. A lot of people still are living in the sort of dinosaur era where canned foods were very high in salt. I can find organic, low in salt, low in sugar foods now that are in cans.

JV: It's not something you just store away just in case something happens in an emergency.

PF: No, absolutely not, absolutely not.

JV: Well Carrie wants to know actually, 'What nutrients can pregnant women gain from canned foods?' Now you'll be able to help her a lot with this.

PF: Well, yeah, I'm very keen on the omega oils for healthy brain development, you know. I want a brain surgeon in here and so we have sardines on toast quite often. Because where I live, we live in the middle of the countryside. You can't get fresh sardines; it's very hard to get them.

JV: Also pilchards as well, pilchards are quite good.

PF: Pilchards are great, yeah. Canned fish is a very useful, good thing. Canned tuna, for the same reason, I buy my canned tuna in spring water and the children love it mixed with a bit of mayonnaise and in a pitta bread at lunch time.

JV: Yeah, is it okay for tuna and pregnant women?

PF: I think so. Well I eat it, yeah. I'm no medical authority on tuna and pregnant women but I eat it, absolutely.

JV: David wants to know, he adores fish but finds fresh fish quite expensive. 'Does tinned fish hold all the same nutrition as fresh and is it better to buy fish in brine or oil?' That's a good question actually, David, because you know you often deliberate, you're standing there - brine, oil or spring water now, that it's in.

PF: A lot of it is a matter of taste. I buy spring water because when I buy tuna I find that it's quite salty, just by its taste, so that's why I like the spring water and I'm always careful about how much salt we consume in our diet. But oils are often very good for you. You need a certain amount of certain types of oil, particularly olive oil is great for you, for your skin and your hair and good nervous system functioning so there's a lot to be had for fish in oil as well but really it boils down to a matter of taste.

JV: Because there's not a lot of choice with fish though, is there, when it's canned. It's either tuna or it's pilchards.

PF: Or mackerel or salmon or sardines.

JV: Yeah. I know, they kind of expand don't they.

PF: And they often come in different sauces.

JV: Yes. You know that would go down a treat ... or trout with salmon.

PF: Yeah.

JV: Lucy wants to know 'How do canned and frozen foods compare? Is one healthier than the other?'

PF: I don't think so, no. I mean, I think with canned foods you have that great advantage that you have with some frozen foods too of almost the second it's picked it's processed. You know, it's put in the can or it's put in the freezer which we don't always get that with our own fresh food by the time we've brought it back from the supermarket or wherever we've bought it from. So I think one doesn't compare and the whole point of our campaign is actually to use in conjunction with ... so last night I was making ... in fact, I'm cheating, my husband was making, at my instruction, because I had to work. I said, 'Right here you are, make a sausage casserole.' So we had some sausages in the freezer, we had an onion and some potatoes that were in the bottom of the fridge that he used up and then we had cans of beans and lentils in the cupboard. So all three complimented each other really well.

JV: And how resourceful you are.

PF: Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

JV: Because usually you look in the cupboard and you look at all this canned food that you've had in there for ages and you just kind of go, 'Oh well, there's nothing to eat.'

PF: There's tons.

JV: So you have to incorporate all this canned food into some great recipes that you can get on www.cannedfood.co.uk as well, log on and find out some recipes because I used some chickpeas in a Moroccan dish that I made the other day.

PF: A feel-good food. Chickpeas are a feel-good food. It's the first time I've used this, is it 'Triptipan' or something beginning with 'T' that they contain that makes you feel good.

JV: Triptipane?

PF: Something like that.

JV: Yes, something like that. You need to be a nutritionist!

JV: Kelly wants to know 'I find practically every food that I need comes in a can. It's cheaper and easy to prepare meals with but do you think I'm doing myself harm by not buying fresh?'

PF: No I don't think anyone is doing themselves harm. This is about what you're putting in your body not so much what you're leaving out, put all the right things in. Make sure you get a balanced diet. Now really, ideally, a balanced diet will come from fresh, frozen and canned, but even in canned you need to just ensure that you're getting some fruit, you're getting some veg, you're getting some beans, you're getting some protein, you're getting all of those things. As long as you're getting all of these things.

JV: Yeah, then that's okay.

PF: Balance your diet.

JV: Well, we have broadcaster and journalist, Philippa Forrester, in the studio with us and she's here to answer your questions about everyday nutrition, things that we can actually get, nutrients that we can get from canned food every day that we don't even know is there. Dennis actually has sent in a question. He says, 'Which canned foods are particularly high in vitamins?' Beans?

PF: Ooh, let's have a look at the wall chart. Now everyone can get this, let's just reinforce this because everyone can get this wall chart.

JV: Yes.

PF: This is why it's so useful because when I go, 'Mm, I can't remember', I go, 'Oh yes, look, apricots.' So vitamin C he was looking at, was he?

JV: He was just saying, '... are particularly high in vitamins.' Across the board I think he means.

PF: Okay, so really you're going to be looking at your fruit and your veg. But also you can go to tuna for vitamin E – you see so this is where the wall chart comes in really handy. Vitamin D, your sardines, mackerel, salmon, all of which you can get canned. Apricots, love apricots! And canned prunes. I never buy prunes in any other form.

JV: Don't go there, you're pregnant, we won't ask you.

PF: No, a beef casserole with a can of prunes in, absolutely delicious!

JV: Philippa, I'm worried now.

PF: Absolutely delicious.

JV: You don't have any recipes do you on that website?

PF: Yes, there are recipes on our website, that one isn't. That's come out of a cookbook at home. That wasn't even my invention.

JV: Well Becky wants to know, 'Can you get your five a day from canned foods or can you give us an example of five options?'

PF: Yes you can, you absolutely can get your five a day. So prunes for breakfast.

JV: Is this what your doctor's been telling you?

PF: No, but you know, prunes are very, very nutritious, you know, there's the obvious reason for eating prunes but that's not the only reason for eating prunes. Apricots for example, for breakfast, maybe on porridge or on some oatflakes, that's also a great source of iron, tinned apricots.

JV: Or maybe do a smoothie like you were saying.

PF: Maybe into a smoothie with coconut milk, so delicious with coconut milk! And then for lunch I would probably have mackerel on toast or sardines on toast or something like that but again if you're looking at your five, what have we got here, we've got asparagus which you can always have alongside. I'm a great one for mixing peas into things like rice. So if at suppertime you're thinking, 'I've only had three', mix some peas or some sweetcorn into your rice or both.

JV: Which I do with my kids as well. You know, you just kind of hide all the vegetables.

PF: Absolutely, it's very easily done. You've just got to think about it. A tin of tomatoes makes a great sauce, that's another one.

JV: Vitamin C.

PF: Yeah great.

JV: Well Mandy has sent us a question. She said, 'Are you finding it easy or hard to maintain a nutritious, balanced diet during your pregnancy?' It's going to be easier isn't it, because you're worrying about something else.

PF: It's easier because you have to, full stop, you have to. Also, this last few months I've had an incredible schedule because when you're a freelance worker, like I am, you're going to think 'I'm going to have three months off at the end of the year, I need to get all my work done now.' And the only way I can get through this incredible schedule is by eating a balanced diet, that's what I'm discovering. So it is easy actually. But you need help. Sometimes I'm tired and I can't think creatively about food and it's really handy to have sources of information, like a wall chart that you can have on the inside of your thing, like some recipes on a website and fact sheets.

JV: Yeah, I mean it's actually a good point to talk about recipes now actually. What recipes are on the website that you find that you've used that are useful.

PF: Well, we've got these fact sheets as well which we've tailored to people. As I've said, it's a very positive, taking control attitude to food, which I really like. So many diets are all about letting the food control you aren't they, you know. They're like – you only can eat this and you're evil if you even think about eating anything else. But we've got recipes for food to beat the blues. As I've said, chickpeas are very good at beating the blues. Pinto, bean and pumpkin casserole with cheese and herb crust.

JV: Mmm!

PF: Mmm, I know and all these recipes are very good. Breakfast boosters so you've got your oat cereal, with lots of fruit on top and yoghurt on top of that.

JV: So which one's your favourite from there then?

PF: Well I've nicked them from the bridal beauty, because I do love the smoothies I have to say. For me there is a fact sheet planning your beach body, but I think this year, I'll just avoid that. Yeah, get in shape for the beach with Tuscan bean soup.

JV: I could Tuscan bean soup.

PF: But we've got pregnancy nutrition and post-pregnancy nutrition there so Moroccan chicken with minted cous-cous and chickpeas.

JV: And your boys, what's their favourite meal from the recipes? I'm sure it's the smoothies, isn't it.

PF: Well, sausage casserole does go down very well.

JV: With haricot beans.

PF: With haricot beans, yes. The fact that you can just put anything you like in. if I haven't got haricot beans, I'll just put kidney beans in or bilotti beans go very well in a sausage casserole. The other thing that is a real winner every time, Shepherd's pie but with lentils in. They don't know they're eating the lentils. Lentils are an amazing source of all different kinds of amino acids and proteins that you can't get anywhere else. And they kind of stodge up the mixture and children like stodgy, they have certain textures that they prefer. My older boy particularly, as I've said so many times, he loves his sardines on toast and that's great for him.

JV: That is great actually. It's hard to get my kid to try eat any kind of fish but I kind of disguise it.

PF: No he loves it and that the younger one, likewise, tuna and then, you know, if I've got nothing in for pudding, I open a tin of fruit and that's another one of their five a day.

JV: Or custard.

PF: Well, no, because if I open a tin of custard nobody else gets a look in! It doesn't make it to the table. Baked beans are a much-understated source of all sorts of things, fibre, protein and vitamins. It's all in there and have you ever met a child that doesn't like baked beans on toast?

JV: I know, exactly. I was eating it yesterday actually.

PF: They love baked beans.

JV: Well Jackie sent in a question, she said, 'Is there a stigma attached still, to eating canned food?' I think there is, isn't there.

PF: I think the answer is probably yes but again, we're talking dinosaur era and some people still think - they just need to think 'Ooh, hold on a minute, canned food has actually moved on quite a long way' and like I said, I buy organic, I buy low fat, I buy low salt, I buy low sugar. And it's just the most fantastic, convenient, nutritional food.

JV: Yes, and there is such a variety of food as well. I mean, what's your theory on the whole kind of 'spaghetti bolognaise in sauce for kids' canned foods?

PF: I always look at the ingredients and I'm very careful about what I give them so I make sure that I understand the ingredients. If I'm giving them something that's a prepared meal for example. I don't always look carefully enough because I've got a passion as well for tinned tomato soup. You can never quite make it in that comfort way that it's made. Anyway so I went home with what I thought was tinned tomato soup for my lunch and it was 'No-mato' soup!

JV: Haha, 'No-mato' soup.

PF: When have you heard of that? 'No-mato soup.' So my advice is always read the labels carefully.

JV: Yeah, what was in it? No 'matoes.

PF: It was a vegetable soup but no tomatoes! It was quite bizarre. But I did think I should have read the label properly there.

PF: So that's what my answer is and a little bit every now and again. I think the problem always comes with every diet, You know, you're going to get fat if you eat bread all day, every day. But a little bit of bread every day isn't going to make you fat.

JV: Being sensible and just looking at what you're eating.

PF: Absolutely.

JV: Now Jacquie wants to know – she really likes soup, 'How do canned ones compare to the carton variety?' That's a good question actually.

PF: It's a very good question because the carton variety are extremely convenient actually and you can get them all over the place so they're very useful, but equally they don't last as long and you can freeze them I suppose but then you know, it's the convenience of just having the can, opening it, tipping it in and as I say, for me there's nothing quite like canned tomato soup.

JV: Or 'No-mato'! Also you can use soups to add to dishes as well, that you're making. You know, like a condensed mushroom soup that you can add to a risotto.

PF: Absolutely, You must be thinking of the same thing because I make a kind of chicken and rice dish with that condensed mushroom soup. It's delicious, isn't it.

JV: Yes it's great, some black pepper on there. There you go, you're on your way

PF: And there are three hungry blokes in my house, they wolf it down, it's really good. So yes, you can always use soups as a basis for sauce.

JV: Yeah, definitely. Now Natalie wants to know, her mother always tells her off for using half a tin of beans and leaving the remainder of the tin in the fridge, which is what I always do. Is it really a bad thing to do?

PF: No, it is a really bad, don't do that.

JV: No I know, my husband was telling me, 'Don't' because I always open the corn and leave it in the fridge. Always decant it into a ...

PF: Decant it into a bowl. The reason being that the reason half of this food stays really fresh is because it's sealed. The second you let the air in reactions start occurring, in basic terms and so you don't want that to occur in the can because that can be dangerous. It's fine if it's occurring in a bowl in the fridge. Absolutely fine.

JV: Oxidisation.

PF: Well we don't want to get too technical.

JV: Just a word that I picked up so I just wanted to use it today. So it's always good to just make sure that you decant it.

PF: Decant it. Absolutely, it's much safer.

JV: Could you just leave it in the fridge for like a short amount of time, for a day or so?

PF: I don't, no.

JV: I am bad!

PF: I'm being strict with you now.

JV: Now Pete has sent us in a question. Please keep your questions coming in by the way because we've got Philippa Forrester in the studio, broadcaster and journalist and she's talking about everyday nutrition. So Pete wants to know, he doesn't have a big freezer so '... tinned foods have been a Godsend but is tinned meat safe?'

PF: Yes, perfectly safe and it keeps for longer than any other kind of meat and it's very useful. In fact I was talking to one of the magazine editors of one the quite well known, popular magazines and she was telling me that she had this amazing recipe for a kind of corn beef hash with potatoes. She said it's one of her favourite foods and it's nutritious. You can always have that can there, that's the thing. In the fridge things come and go and they need to come and go quickly before they go off but in the cupboard you can always have your cans of meat there.

JV: But does it have a shelf life though, tinned meat?

PF: Well I'm a bit careful with 'best before' dates. And 'best before' doesn't necessarily mean 'safe before'. You can eat them afterwards but to be honest, nothing hangs about in my house that long. There's a high turnover of food and once you start being inspired by the recipes on the website and getting your head around what's what and thinking about it in a very positive way, 'Ooh, what can I put into my body?' not, 'What am I leaving out of my body?'

JV: Yeah, because my memories of tinned meat is kind of, battered spam or ...

PF: Some people like battered spam.

JV: Yeah, I might actually go and buy some, I've a craving for battered spam.

PF: Well you know, there's a huge amount of healthy food available in cans. Meat and others and so there's no reason for it to be lying around for that long. It gets quite a high turnover in my house.

JV: Well Oliver has sent in a question. He's said, 'Is it true that you shouldn't ever buy a dented can? If not, why not?'

PF: I was told that as well, 'Don't buy a dented can' and I can't remember the reason. I think it's to do with the seal inside the can cracking if it's dented so different reactions take place with the food and that's not what we want, but I don't buy dented cans either.

JV: Because often when you go to the supermarket they've got half price or ten percent off because the cans have been dented. So your advice is don't go near them

PF: Don't, absolutely.

JV: Okay. Right, canned food and students ... I did live on baked beans as a student.

PF: Haha, it's like love and marriage.

JV: It is, isn't it, because it's so easy. I only lived on baked beans and actually I still do.

PF: It's so easy, absolutely. I think that in those days in the future, I shall be sending mine away with loads of cans because it's fantastic.

JV: Just stock up on baked beans and you'll be alright. But what other canned food can students have? Because, obviously, baked beans is the staple because it fills you up immediately but then we should be looking at the whole everyday nutrition and what we should be eating.

PF: Well there's a selection of things, a perfect example, for a student wall, those bare walls in those horrible bedsits, here you go, look, a nice colourful wall chart. Certainly, what students need is brain power and you get that from your omega fats. The ability to concentrate straight into that brain, so you want to be eating your canned fish, but also oils, rape seed oil and walnuts and other things as well as the canned food will give you that. The sardines on toast, cheap and cheerful. Get yourself some brown bread, make it even healthier. Students obviously need to be recovering from lots of late nights with lots of vitamin C.

JV: For keeping them healthy so they don't get any colds.

PF: Yeah, those nasty infections. Canned fruit is something else that students should certainly be looking at. And then there's baked beans, you can do anything with baked beans.

JV: And it's great on a student diet as well.

PF: You can stir them into casseroles, you can have them on their own with toast. They're great with sausages for breakfast. You know, there's lots of uses for baked beans and again, keeping their fibre and their general health up together.

JV: And also remembering not to have the syrup, the fruit in the syrup because there's obviously more sugar.

PF: There's a high sugar content. Yeah.

JV: So buy it in it's own juice.

PF: Absolutely. So you need to maintain your energy, maintain your vitamin C, keep your immune system boosted but also those omega threes which are good for your brainpower and concentration.

JV: Well we can tell them all this but do you think they'll listen?

JV: No, they won't listen, I don't think they're going to listen. I think it's going to be baked beans all the way.

PF: Well, it's a free wall chart, it's free.

JV: That works for students.

PF: It's free, www.cannedfood.co.uk. A free poster.

JV: Exactly, and if anything else they can write 'beans' on it.

PF: Yes.

JV: But Mary has sent in a question, 'Is there anything you would recommend that is better to eat tinned?

PF: Better to eat tinned? For me it's the beans for the convenience. I mean for me, tinned is convenience so I don't have to think in advance. Last night with my sausage casserole I didn't have to think the night before, 'We'll definitely have sausage casserole tonight' and soak the beans and then boil the beans for however many hours.

JV: I know, it's such a long, laborious process but I mean, for example, is kidney beans better to have canned than soaked or dried?

PF: No, I don't think better in that respect, I think better in the convenience respect. I don't think necessarily better nutritionally although you can certainly watch your salt levels and your sugar levels by choosing those things, you can even choose organic canned beans now.

JV: Because some people feel that they're cheating though, aren't they. When they're doing a recipe, someone's coming over and they bung some tinned beans in to a recipe dish. They kind of think that they're cheating because they haven't lovingly prepared it the night before, slaving over a hot stove.

PF: Were you the butcher or did you just buy it? I mean how far do you want to go? Do you want to grow the beans yourself?

JV: Yes, exactly but it's okay to cheat.

PF: It's good to cheat, sometimes we have to cheat. I would rather cheat and eat a meal full of nutrition and serve a balanced diet to my family. And if this is cheating it's better than a lot of the meals in polystyrene containers that we can also cheat with.

JV: Exactly, well I find with beans that you have to drain them and then soak them in water just to kind of get rid of the brine that's in them as well and maybe just leave them for a couple of hours or so.

PF: There's a huge selection. As I've said, the fruit, you can mix and mingle, if you're making a smoothie and you've got a glut of strawberries, fantastic, throw the strawberries in with something else that's in a can. That's not cheating.

JV: Perfect. Johnny wants to know, 'Philippa, what canned food would you use in a romantic meal?'

PF: Hmm. What canned food ... if I say beans - that's not very romantic, is it? Asparagus is always a very romantic food I think and fish somehow is always romantic and pineapple. In fact, you know, my husband loves nothing more than a nice gammon with a slice of pineapple on top and where do I get that pineapple from?

JV: Yeah, I actually bought a can of pineapple the other day and it's gone down a treat with my kids.

PF: I loved canned pineapple, absolutely love it, you know that kind of traditional home-cooked, slice of gammon with a pineapple on top. He's a very simple man, my husband.

JV: Lovely and there's more recipes to be had from www.cannedfood.co.uk and there's a whole heap of recipes on there as well and information.

PF: Absolutely, things that you would never imagine. Anita, who's our nutritionist has come up with some fantastic ideas.

JV: And information about everyday nutrition and what else they can do to get their nutrients from food as well. Philippa thank you, it's been very enlightening today. I'm going to go off and buy some more cans.

PF: You're welcome.

JV: And thank you very much for joining us today and join us again for the next web chat.