From 1958, the U.S. Army Natick Institute and Swift Institute began to study soft canned food for the Army. In order to replace tinplate cans used in the battlefield with retort pouch, a lot of trial production and performance tests were carried out. The soft canned food produced by Natick Institute in 1969 was trusted and successfully applied to the Apollo space program.
Because this kind of packaged food can be placed at room temperature, has a long shelf life, can be eaten cold or hot, is convenient to use, and can save energy needed for preservation, so it is very popular with people. Sweden is the first country in the world to produce and sell soft canned food, but Japan is the most important country in the world to produce soft canned food as a commodity on a large scale. 1968, Otsuka Food Industry Company of Japan used transparent high-temperature retort pouch to package curry products, which was the first commercialization in Japan. 1969 uses aluminum foil as raw material to improve the quality of luggage and expand market sales. 1970, started to produce rice products packaged in retort pouch; 1972, retort pouch hamburger cake was developed and commercialized, and retort pouch meatballs were also put on the market. The aluminum foil type distillation bag was first made of three layers of heat-resistant materials, and it was called "distillation bag" (English name is RetortPouch, abbreviated as RP). The distillation bag sold by Toyo Canning Company in Japan was called RP-F with aluminum foil (resistance to 135℃), and the transparent multilayer composite bag without aluminum foil was called RP-T and RR-N (resistance to 120℃) European and American countries call this bag a soft can.