Although not considered a glamorous, high society food, baked beans are nutritious, hearty and filling, feeding both body and spirit. My grandfather used to make baked bean sandwiches to take on fishing trips and I have fond memories of washing them down with a cup of his light and sweet hot tea from a Thermos bottle while angling on Fisher's Pond.
B&G Foods acquired the B&M® (Burnham & Morrill) brand of baked beans on March 15, 1999 from The Pillsbury Company. They've since "re-staged the brand with a re-styled label and a re-formulated recipe" that umm... sucks. It's no wonder they've lost much of their original market share. Sure, they still make them in Portland, Maine at the original factory, but they should have left well enough alone and not screwed around with the recipe.
The words mealy and bland immediately come to mind. Reading the label, I noticed that they're also using high fructose corn syrup in place of brown sugar and modified food starch to thicken the sauce. The piece of salt pork that they add to each can has also shrunk to the size of a sugar cube. Baked beans are inexpensive to make at home and I'm certain even less expensive to make in large commercial quantities for canning. Was it really necessary to cut costs by substituting cheaper ingredients for the original recipe? We're talking about saving mere pennies per can, folks.
B&G Foods, shame on you.
No comments:
Post a Comment