Most gardeners enjoy the journey from seed to plant, to harvested produce, to preservation, to seed saving, and then finally eating a rewarding, hard-earned meal. While there are many advantages to gardening and harvesting, there are some disadvantages of food preservation.

If you’re new to gardening, and especially if this is your first season to preserve your garden harvest, it can feel overwhelming at times. So it’s good to be aware of disadvantages, so that you can plan without too many surprises and setbacks.

10 Disadvantages of Food Preservation

1. Jars are fragile
2. Broken seals cause spoilage
3. Canning is time-consuming
4. Canning can be costly to get started
5. Foods that are improperly preserved can spoil
6. Preserved foods taste different than fresh food
7. Canned foods have lower nutritional values
8. Preserved food takes a lot of space for storage
9. Preserving food take time and organization
10. Canning is time consuming

Let us know your thoughts on advantages and disadvantages of food preservation.

Glass Jar Disadvantages in Food Preservation

Glass jars are fragile and can break easily. Canned goods should not be stored in places where they may freeze in colder temperatures, as the jars are likely to burst.

Dropping jars of goods will ruin the jar, the food inside, and potentially several other jars if it lands on them. It can also be cumbersome to transport glass jars too because they can clink together and break.

We had family members whose pantry shelves collapsed one year, thereby breaking the majority of their glass canned pantry inventory. OUCH! The disadvantages in food preservation here were clear and painful!!!

Problems With Broken Seals

Broken seals spoil food. This means that your time, effort, and produce is ruined, and you’ll need to be sure to wash and sanitize the jar that had the broken seal. If the seal is broken, the food will rot, decompose, grow fungus, mold, or mildew. Worse yet, it can cause botulism, and you won’t even know until it is likely too late. 

Canning Can Be Costly

Canning requires jars, jar lids, and jar rings. It also requires a water bath canner and/or a pressure canner. You’ll need lifting tongs, towels, perhaps a thermometer, and the foods that you plan to preserve. You cannot reuse jar lids, so you have to but these new every year. 

It is cheaper in the short run to buy canned goods from the grocery store, rather than to buy all the supplies and equipment. 

Improperly Preserved Foods Can Spoil

Foods not property canned or sealed can spoil. Botulism in canned goods cannot be seen, smelled, tasted, or felt.

It is a dangerous affliction because you likely won’t know that it can pose a threat until you already have it. Improperly sealed jars can harbor botulism, causing lots of health problems for you and your family. 

You can find more on canning and preserving here.

Preserved Foods Feel and Taste Differently

If the experience of eating is more important than preserving food for long-term storage, then preserving foods may not be a good idea for you, as they all alter the taste and texture as compared to garden fresh.

Canning will slightly to moderately alter the taste and texture of the foods. Some will be saltier, some will be more sugary, others will have more acid, and nearly all of them will be wet and submerged in liquids for long periods of time, causing a slight to severe texture difference. 

The Nutritional Value is Lower in Canned Goods

Canned goods lose about 65% of their nutritional value.

However, it is worth noting that frequent can users (FCUs) get significantly more vitamins, minerals, and nutrients than those who don’t regularly consume canned goods. We’ll discuss this in further detail in the advantages section below. 

Preserved Foods Take Up a Lot of Space

Preserved foods can take up a lot of space in the freezer and pantry.

Canned goods have to be kept in a moderately climate controlled environment where the cans will not get too hot, not face direct sunlight, and not get too cold to freeze and burst.

The best location for almost all food preservation enthusiasts is in their own home. These canned goods take up a lot of space, and they weigh a good bit, especially with dozens or hundreds of cans to store.

While some people successfully store foods in basements, crawlspaces, attics, sheds, or barns, this is not ideal, and it will be inconvenient at the very least to retrieve these items. ANd don’t forget that they are heavy and may require you to install new shelves eventually. 

Preserved Foods Need to be Labeled, Dated and Rotated

In addition to the time it takes to prep, can, freeze, dry, pickle, infuse, etc., it also takes time to clearly label each jar, bag or package by item name and date packaged.

Beyond labeling, is the need to keep track of the dates of items in storage and to rotate them as you add new items, so that you’re always using the oldest first.

Many beginning gardeners may be tempted to decide that gardening overall is just too much trouble by the time they get to this point.

However, there are many intangible benefits to growing and preserving your own food that go way beyond the convenience you might lose from doing it yourself versus dropping off at the store on the way home from work.

And a full pantry at season’s end is a sight to behold and well worth all the effort that went into it, for there’s no better food on earth than that which you’ve grown, nurtured and preserved to enjoy for months to come.

Canning is Time Consuming

One of the major disadvantages of food preservation by canning, is how much time it takes, especially if you have a large harvest to put away and preserve. Small projects may take one to three hours; putting away a garden’s worth of food could take special planning and several weeks to complete.

Before you even begin the canning process, you’ll have to source all of your ingredients, tools, and produce that you want to can. After that, the canning process is lengthy, as is the cool-down process, and then the feat of finding places for all of the jars of preserved foods.  

Canning is a Hot Task!

A lot of canning takes place in the heat of summer, which means you’re heating up the kitchen when it’s already hot outside. This means it gets pretty hot in the kitchen, or else you’re also needing pay to cool the heat you’re generating.

See the 3 principles of food preservation here.

Advantages and Benefits of Food Preservation

1. Canned foods last for years giving access to food year-round
2. It’s usually more affordable to preserve homegrown produce rather than buy it
3. Preserved foods can last over long periods of time
4. Homegrown foods are always healthier.

The list of advantages of food preservation is a bit shorter, but the impact is massive and jam-packed with great reasons to get into food preservation. 

Home Canned Goods Give People Better Access to Healthy Foods

People who regularly consume canned goods were proven to eat a lot more nutrients, vitamins, and minerals than those who don’t regularly have canned goods.

Frequent can users (FCU’s… yes… that’s a thing), consume more nutrients than non FCU’s.

Frequent Can Users (FCUs) Consume More Nutrients

• 20% more fiber
• 16% more calcium
• 16% more magnesium
• 31% more vitamin C
• 22% more vitamin A
• 12% more folate
• 19% more potassium
• 12% more sodium
• 9% more selenium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, and selenium

FCUs also get more RDA for protein, more fiber, and more fat-soluble vitamins.^[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4517017/ 

Canning is More Affordable Than Purchasing Goods

Once you have paid for the upfront costs of canning supplies, the canning process becomes very affordable in the subsequent years. Only the added ingredients and the replacement lids need to be purchased.

If you grow your own garden and save seeds for future plantings, the foods essentially become free, so long as you don’t count your labor against the final result. 

Canned Goods Do Not Decay

Even though canned goods lose some nutritional value, if appropriately canned, they will remain safe and edible for years to come. This means that you can enjoy the benefits of your garden all year round. 

There’s something really wonderful about opening a jar of fresh canned tomatoes, or fresh canned garden vegetable soup in the middle of winter. It’s like opening a jar of healthy goodness, and you can almost taste the summer sunshine.

So yes… there’s no way that gardening saves time over store-bought, but store-bought can never compete in taste and nutrition as compared to homegrown and preserved.

Contributions from the Community

Food Preservation is Essential for Survival

“Up in Iowa I can get snowed in for weeks. Not often but it does happen. I don’t just love preserving food, we require it. Power outages, no transportation, etc.”
~Debie Baugher, an extraordinarily resourceful gardener!

Dehydration for Food Preservation

“I prefer dehydrating. Yes, the food is not preserved for as long as canning but there are many great reasons to dry food. It shrinks the food by taking out all moisture. So it takes less space to store it. I like using glass jars with 2 part lids. It’s not a concern for me because the food is not heavy and can be easily stacked and stored. I also vacuum seal many dried items (careful with punctures breaking the seal. I usually wrap it in parchment paper first). Dehydrating is my preferred method.”
~Shannon Schofield, homesteader, beekeeper Shannon’s Sweet Tooth Farm, author, b.1977

See Shannon’s article on Pollinator Flowers for Bees here and Lessons from the Garden here.

So yes.. there are disadvantages to food preservation, but the advantages, while smaller in number are bigger in benefits, in our experience and opinion!