Packaging weight

I sometimes read of people packing retort style packages (like this tuna) as a means of saving weight. I never bought into that idea. It seemed to me that the total weight of the smaller packaging per food weight probably made it a wash at best.

I don't have any Spam pouches to weight, but I do have four tuna pouches. According to my not real precise scale the Spam with its can weighs 13 ounces and the four tuna pouches weigh 12.25 ounces.

There is 12 ounces of Spam in the can, and 2.6 ounces of tuna in each pouch for a total of 10.4 ounces of tuna.

That amounts to about 0.083 ounces of packaging per ounce of food for the can, and about 0.18 ounces of packaging per ounce of food for the pouches. That means the packaging per unit weight of food for the pouches is more then 2X what it is for cans in this example.

Smaller cans would probably tip it to more of a wash, and there is a convenience factor involved that is not part of the weight equation.