TikTok Doesn't Know What To Think About A Canned Food Chicken Reveal

A wide variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and meat products are available in cans, and thanks to TikTok, we now know that whole chickens are too.

The idea of canned food does not gel with everyone, much less the rare concept of whole canned chicken. Perhaps it is the perceived threat of the toxic Bisphenol-A (BPA), a compound in packaging that has the potential to contaminate food. Fortunately, the risk decreases every day. Currently, 95% of food cans are BPA-free, per The Environmental Working Group.

The fear of preservatives also discourages people from canned foods, which is unfounded, as canned foods are heated, sealed, and air-tight, per Mealtime, making preservatives unnecessary. While some canned foods contain preservatives, many others do not.

As for canned chicken, the product has existed under different brands, per Bon Appetit, and has been around for a while. As one respondent on TikTok remarked: "We had a whole chicken in a can a few times when I was a kid. That was 60 years ago."

The TikTok in question shows a scene from the cooking show, Chopped, where disgruntled competitors handle whole canned chickens. "This is disgusting," says one of the judges, mirroring the looks on the faces of those charged with creating something edible out of the culinary anomaly.

Judging by the responses to the TikTok, canned whole chicken has been around for decades, and some netizens advocate for it while the anti-whole canned chicken lobby's reaction to the video is surprisingly mild. One netizen applied an unassailable logic when he said: "The fact they are sold means that people buy and eat them."

For the netizens unfamiliar with the idea, it was off-putting, and a respondent echoed sentiments vented by one of the contestants when she said, "I wanna cry too."

According to Eat Right, canned foods can be nutritionally beneficial, though it is important to check the label. Canned food's natural process of deterioration is stalled by the packaging method. Air-tight containment keeps all the food's nutrients in pristine condition for years, and per responses in the Tiktok comment thread, canned chicken may work well in foods like soup, salad, bone broth, and chicken pot pie.