I took a class recently on the history of food preservation.
In the early days, metal containers were the cheapest and easiest to make, so almost all food was stored in cans. Tin was a particularly soft and easy to mold/shape, and didn’t rust like other options, so most preserved food cans were made of tin.
Things went great for a while, with some foods easily being shipped to places they previously wouldn’t have survived due to long journeys, and families could store food to eat when it wasn’t available fresh.
However, reports of illness around certain foods started to become prevalent. Pickles foods would frequently “go bad” much sooner than other canned foods, and even though the food tasted the same, people would report illness very soon after eating older pickled products. After years of analyzing (crudely) samples of purportedly problematic pickles, scientists finally concluded the preserved foods themselves were fine—it was the cans that were the problem!
They discovered certain food solutions—like pickle brine—could “leach” harmful chemicals from tin, much faster than non-brined foods. As an experiment, they started un-canning recently preserved pickles and putting pickled food in glass containers instead of tin. Jarred pickles tasted exactly the same and were preserved just as well as their canned counterparts, but nobody got sick!
In the end, the conclusion was uncanny and jarring.
. . . .
Note: this is my first “original” joke (though inspired by lots of other variations). I wasn’t totally sure if the joke was better short and sweet, or if it was worth dragging out for the “I can’t believe I read that whole thing for a dad-joke level punchline” ending.
I debated back and forth, and felt like no matter what I chose, some would like it and some would hate it.
I guess you could say I was in a real pickle.
Welcoming all criticism.
EDIT: Because a few people have commented about “learning” from this joke, please note THIS IS ALL FICTION! Absolutely none of this is true as far as I know. Completely made up. Any factual truths are complete coincidences. Reader beware.
