From which Brits eat most to why they give us wind, fun facts about baked beans – the UK’s favourite lockdown food

WHILE Covid has made us miserable, one staple has given us a warm feeling – baked beans.

We eat 540MILLION cans a year — but have been wolfing more of the parp-inducing favourite than ever in lockdown.

Royal Geographical Society

The explorer Robert Falcon Scott took crates of beans on his Antarctic Expedition in 1910[/caption]

From rocker Roger Daltrey in a bath of beans on 1967 album The Who Sell Out, to the trumping cowboys scoffing by a fire in 1974 comedy-western film Blazing Saddles, and countless cheery ads, the sloppy foodstuff has earned iconic status.

Here we celebrate 20 bean facts . . . 

• Beans give us wind because they contain sugars and fibre that our bodies battle to digest. When the sugars meet bacteria in our large intes- tines it produces gas that causes us to blow off.
• Baked beans are not, in fact, baked. They are steamed haricot beans.
• These beans are harvested in North America in the summer and left out to dry, then shipped to the UK and rehydrated.
• The world’s biggest baked-bean factory is the 54-acre Heinz site in Wigan, Lancs, where three million cans a day roll off the production line.

Getty Images – Getty

Baked beans on toast[/caption]

• Heinz Baked Beans were top of the pops when that album cover starring Roger Daltrey hit the shops in the Sixties.
• Baked beans also sealed their place in movie history with Seventies comedy Blazing Saddles, as tough-guy riders turned into guff guys by the campfire.
• Baked beans were first sold in the UK at posh London food store Fortnum & Mason in 1901, as a luxury.
• Heinz opened its Wigan plant in 1959, but also had a site in Harlesden, North West London, from the 1920s until 2000.

Heinz

There are an average of 465 beans in each 415g Heinz tin[/caption]

• The process from dried bean to tinned takes two hours.
• At Heinz, a laser checks each bean for colour and an air-jet removes any that do not quite look the part.
• Ingredients for the Heinz secret recipe arrive at the Wigan complex in three separate bags, which are numbered rather than labelled to keep anyone from working them out.
• The factory each day gets through enough tomatoes, for the sauce, to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

• There are an average of 465 beans in each 415g Heinz tin.
• During the rationing in World War Two, the Ministry of Food classified baked beans as an essential food.
• Brummies are the UK’s No1 bean eaters, with 80 per cent feasting at least once a week. Manchester is next up, with 70 per cent tucking in, then closely followed by Sheffield and Leeds.
• The cheery old line “Beanz Meanz Heinz” was thought up in a London pub over a pint of beer. In 2012 it was voted the best advertising slogan of all time.
• The explorer Robert Falcon Scott took crates of beans on his Antarctic Expedition in 1910.

Lee Thompson – The Sun

During the rationing in World War Two, the Ministry of Food classified baked beans as an essential food[/caption]

• The Guinness World Record for the most baked beans eaten in five minutes with a cocktail stick is proudly held by David Rush, in Idaho, US, who polished off 275 in 2018. The most beans eaten with chopsticks in one minute is 72.
• Captain Beany is a charity fundraiser who wears an orange superhero outfit and matching face paint. He has been a candidate in local and national elections and has raised more than £100,000 for good causes. In 1986 he set a world record for the longest time sat in a bath of beans — lasting more than 100 hours.
• Only Heinz baked beans come in a turquoise can. The company has a worldwide Trade Mark registration for selling beans in a tin that colour.

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