The article fails to mention the main reason food is shaped "inefficiently": serving size.
Besides being cooked in the can (as egypturnash points out), a can of tuna contains two sandwiches of tuna. A jar of tomato sauce contains two servings of tomato sauce. A can of soup contains two servings of soup.
Yes, you have to be able to hold it in your hand, and stack it on a shelf. But you can't make a smaller can because that would be "less soup". No one wants to buy smaller cans of soup, and the manufacturers certainly don't want to sell less soup per purchase either.
It probably contains 2 servings of tuna, just like a can of soup contains two servings of soup. Most/Many people will use it as a single portion.
Pop, chip, candy makers used to label their products as multiple servings when it was normally used as a single portion and have since been forced to stop.
Exactly the opposite situation to cat food; were I to feed my cat the amouns that producer says I should, i.e. 2 bags a day, instead of half a bag, my cat would probably reach Schwartzfield radius in a month and collapse into a black hole.
> Pop, chip, candy makers used to label their products as multiple servings when it was normally used as a single portion and have since been forced to stop.
Forced to stop? As far as I've ever heard, serving size for all of those things has always been set by law. It's a little weird to say you're "forcing [someone] to stop" doing something you were forcing them to do in the first place.
You can see the Code of Federal Regulations defining the serving size of chips as 30 grams here: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRS... . For "pop" (ok, carbonated beverages), a serving is defined as 8 fluid ounces. Unsurprisingly, a 20-ounce bottle usually contains 2.5 servings of carbonated beverage. How is that the pop, chip, and candy makers' fault?
But a can with optimal shape could be produced that contains the same volume of tuna. I think "tradition" is the factor here. Everyone knows that a can of tuna is like a hockey puck shape. If you all of a sudden changed it to a different shape, I'm sure people wouldn't even recognize it.
Most cans of tuna here (Uruguay) are not hockey-puck shaped - and soup doesn't come in cans either, but in Tetra-Paks, except for the rare Campbell's import.
Searching for images I came across this very relevant article on irregular can types:
When I look for tuna at the grocery store, I looked for the can shape, rather than the tuna section or tuna labels. If tomorrow I went to the grocery store, and all the cans of tuna were a different shape (or a different package) I would end up having to ask someone.
Besides being cooked in the can (as egypturnash points out), a can of tuna contains two sandwiches of tuna. A jar of tomato sauce contains two servings of tomato sauce. A can of soup contains two servings of soup.
Yes, you have to be able to hold it in your hand, and stack it on a shelf. But you can't make a smaller can because that would be "less soup". No one wants to buy smaller cans of soup, and the manufacturers certainly don't want to sell less soup per purchase either.
Economics trumps material efficiency.