Five Beanz still Meanz Heinz

Lunch at my school was about baked beans. Beans with potato waffles, with chips, with those turkey simulacra of dinosaurs. Beans were the alpha and omega of the culinary world, and no one complained. Why? Because they are unctuous, slurpy, soft, and lovely.

Not that one would want to eat them every day now – the things that make them pleasant are the very things that give them that air of childishness. Something not lost on Heinz, which has launched a five-bean "adult update" ("BEANZ FOR GROWN UPZ"). The sauce remains sacrosanct, but in addition to the usual haricots, there are also kidney, pinto, cannellini and borlotti beans, and the label is black.

It is the same gambit which convinced us that lemonade or ginger beer in retro glass bottles is all grown-up too: tinker with the design and posh up the ingredients, and the cash registers rings. But while Fentimans' drinks look nothing like a bottle of Sprite, this looks, well, like a can of 85p beans. For me at least, then, whatever the packaging, beans doesn't just mean Heinz… it also means school dinners.