What You Ought to Know About Canned Foods in General and DEL MONTE Products in Particular.

To Use canned food products intelligently, economically and to the best advantage, every housewife should know something of the processes involved in their commercial production. Canning is the method by which food is preserved. In its highest development it is the preservation of food in as nearly its natural condition as possible, or in the condition in which it is generally used.

This is accomplished solely through the use of that great natural sterilizing agent - heat - and heat alone. There are no artificial preservatives of any kind needed or used in canning fruits and vegetables. Each product is processed, hermetically sealed in cans and then heated to the temperature and for the time required to secure perfect sterilization for each individual variety. This simplicity of method makes canning at once the safest, cheapest and most successful way to keep food in perfect condition until it is needed.

In principle there is no real difference between home and commercial canning. But the large canner has in reality many advantages over the housewife, all of which make for greater certainty of results and uniformity of quality. His firsthand choice of raw materials, his equipment for handling them in large quantities by special machinery, his accurate devices for grading as to size and quality, his standardized methods of processing, canning and sterilizing, as well as his exacting sanitary precautions in the handling and packing of each product, all give him an immeasurable advantage over the woman in the kitchen.

Quality in canned foods really begins with the production of the material - in the proper selection of variety and seed and in exercising a supervision and control over every stage in the growth, cultivation, harvest and delivery of the fresh fruits and vegetables to the canning kitchens.

The raw product must be of first class quality in every respect, uniform in size and development, and at just the proper stage of ripeness or maturity, to secure the best results.

And after it is delivered, it must be carefully graded both for quality and size. In canning eternal vigilance is the price of quality, and only long experience equips men to select that which is suitable and reject that which is unfit.

Why Del Monte Quality Is Highest Quality

The DEL MONTE ideal of quality in canned foods traces its origin to the early days of California.

Long before the transcontinental railway was built - when settlers were still making their way slowly across the country in prairie schooners or sailing 'round the Horn - the founders of the DEL MONTE business were already in California, canning and preserving the golden harvests of its most fertile valleys.

They were the first in the field.

They began as pioneers - in a new land and in a comparatively new industry - with very little capital but with a big ideal - an ideal, which, backed by the determined spirit of '49, has revolutionized the canning business and given the whole world better things to eat.

That ideal was to can the finest fruits and vegetables grown, and so to perfect the processes of canning that the finished product should retain its full natural flavor and freshness.

They believed that the way to secure the finest fruits and vegetables was to locate their canneries in those sections where soil and climate combined to produce Nature's best. And they believed further that, to preserve that natural goodness at its best, the ripe fruits should be "packed where they ripen the day they are picked".

That was the principle upon which the DEL MONTE business was started nearly 60 years ago. And that is the principle upon which it has grown and developed until today the California Packing Corporation is the largest canner of fruits and vegetables in existence and DEL MONTE Quality is recognized the world over as the standard of excellence in foods.

A Far Search For Del Monte Flavor

Fine flavor in fruits and vegetables is what "good breeding" is in people. One is just as much a matter of careful cultivation as the other. Both are developed only under the most favorable environment.