FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Compare tuna cans with pouches

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Several brands of tuna are now available packaged in foil pouches. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Tuna is still a staple here. But the price has gone up, and some odd-looking packaging has appeared on grocery-store shelves: neat, lightweight vacuum-packed foil pouches of tuna.

All the national brands — Chicken of the Sea, Bumble Bee and Starkist — are offering this way, and packers boast that there's less waste because the fish is packed with much less water (oil-packed is not available).

The pouch-packed tuna is pretty pricey at first glance: $4.50 and up for albacore and $2.50 and up for chunk, in pouches that weight just over seven ounces (that's from 36.5 to 83.5 cents an ounce as compared to canned tuna at 19.9 to 25 cents an ounce).

In a side-by-side sampling, we found little difference in taste or texture between pouch and can. The pouch-packed tuna had a slightly more yellow color; the can tended toward a more-appetizing pinkish tone.

The real difference was — just as the package promised — waste, assuming you don't use the water that comes in the can (some casserole dishes do, but most other dishes call for draining off the water).

A well-drained six-ounce can of Bumble Bee albacore tuna ($2.29) yielded a loosely packed four ounces of meat and just shy of two ounces of juice, or about 57 cents an ounce for the usable product. A 7.6-ounce package of Bumble Bee albacore slid from the pouch almost solid and yielded 7.5 ounces of tuna and about two teaspoons of juice, meaning virtually all the tuna, at 63.6 cents an ounce, was usable.

In Hawai'i's smaller living spaces, anything that slips more readily into a cupboard is welcome. But some may have safety concerns. We found the packaging readily pierced by the tines of a fork and, while it's unlikely that normal handling would produce a breach, the pouches may be more prone to tampering than cans.

If that concerns you in these paranoid times, stick with cans for now.