I don’t have many canned beans. Mostly just dry stuff now that I have the Instant pot. But I do happen to have a can of Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans, because I love buying regional products. This one is made in Mexico. Mexico, New York, that is. Ingredients: Water, Navy Beans, Brown Sugar, Bacon, Salt and Baking Soda.
No tomatoes in that one.
Scene: a brawl at an English pub:
Constable: 'Ere now, stop that, stop that! Wot’s all this then?
Brawler: Oi 'eared d’is 'ere Yank say 'Einz Beans is American beans!
Constable: Roight, carry on with the thrashing, but moind the furniture!
Just checked our pantry. We have tins of B&M “Bacon & Onion”, Great Value “Maple Cured Bacon”, Bush’s Best “Maple & Cured Bacon”, and Bush’s Best “Country Style” baked beans; none of them have tomatoes.
Bush’s vegetarian beans, on the label it says “in a tangy sauce with brown sugar and spices” have tomato paste.
It seems that some U.S. canned baked beans use tomato as an ingredient, and others don’t, but the main thing is that they use some sort of sweetener (molasses, brown sugar, maple syrup, etc.), and the sauce is usually some shade of brown, as a result.
At least visually, to me, it looks like the sauce in Heinz Baked Beans in the U.S. is just a basic tomato sauce, more akin to what we in the U.S. have in canned pasta, like Spaghetti-Os.
From the description of the taste it sounds like Campbell’s had cornered the “sweet, tomato” baked bean market in the US. It’s the only kind I’ll eat.
Smapti hit it earlier. Brits and Yanks mean different things when they say “baked beans.” If a Brit is traveling in the US and wants beans on toast, they would look for “pork & beans,” not “baked beans.”
Two people separated by a common language, as usual. Just like we mean different things when we think of “mustard.”
That’s the best part! I love digging those lumps of pork belly out of the bottom of the can! 
And “spotted dick”.
Not to mention “knock up.” 
A girl I knew in grade school and high school in Wisconsin spent her junior year of college studying in England. One of the stories she came back home with was when she was talking with a male classmate in a pub one evening, and they made a plan to do something together the next day. He said, “I’ll come knock you up tomorrow morning,” which left her a little shocked. 
Did he ever ask her for a rubber? 
That is, an eraser?
Kellogg’s Corn Flakes don’t make the top 10 in 2017. (Second chart, down the page some)
THe #1, private brands probably is the biggest poly bags of ersatz favorites put out by Malt-O-Meal and carried by many big chains as their store brand.
Maybe because Heinz insists on having them stocked in the “Breakfast Foods” aisle…
And yet, what cereal do they show in that first image on the page?
And yes, the cans for a lot of bean products are labeled “Pork and beans”, but folks eating the contents of those cans don’t call them that. They’re just “baked beans”, and so far as I can tell, are the same thing as the British product.
That’s not pork, it’s the Queen Bean and the others are her worker beans…
The pork and beans labeling , or pork is pretty important if you keep kosher.
When I first saw this I thought it was because of WW2 rationing, for some unknown reasoning. The UK rationed Bacon into the fifties.
We used to have an excellent Mexican restaurant with the name Queen Bean. It was a family owned place and we were sad when it closed. We found a new place and then they closed and now we haven’t found another good place nearby.
So the sauce is Royal Jelly?