Shopping Tips: Your guide to soup!

While we think of winter as a time for eating higher energy foods, winter is also soup-time. Soups are a super-convenient and comforting winter food, and if you choose well, you can get a soup packed with nutrients. Studies have found regularly consuming soup can reduce energy intake, increase satiety and promote weight-loss. However, when you venture into the supermarket you are bombarded by choices! So here’s what to look for when you’re standing in the aisle.

Soup can be a nutrition winner!

If you’ve ever made a soup at home, you know that usually soup contains a whole pile of vegies, some protein in the form of meat, chicken, seafood or beans, and stock and that’s about it. In it’s most simple form, soup is really nutritious and makes a great choice post sleeve. It’s easy to get one to two serves of vegies in a cup of soup, and they can be high in protein (depending on the type of soup). Soups are also an excellent option for the puree and soft phase post-op.

Tip: If you can’t find the perfect soup that is also high in protein, then add a scoop of clear, tasteless protein powder before serving.

However, soup can also be high in fat and salt so you need to read the label. A good rule of thumb is to avoid soups described as ‘creamy’ or Asian-style soups with coconut milk as these have the potential to be high in saturated fat. Sodium is also a problem due to the stock used as the base for soups which is inherently salty and helps with preservation of packaged soups. If you are making soup at home, you can dilute the stock with water to bring the sodium content down, but if you’re choosing from the supermarket, you’ll need to read the label.

The supermarket soup choices

If you walk into a supermarket, you’re likely to see soup in a few different spots. You can buy fresh soup in the fridge, liquid shelf-stable soup in cans, cartons and microwaveable pots,
and dehydrated soups (think Cup-a-Soup).

Chilled soups aren’t too far removed from homemade soups, but they’re also the most expensive and depending on the packaging and portion size, may not be as convenient to take to work.

The shelf-stable liquid soups don’t always have that homemade soup ‘texture’, but things have improved dramatically here, and often they’re tasty, and super convenient.

Dehydrated soups are usually the cheapest but also have the worst nutrition profile because they lack vegies or legumes and are high in salt. Best to stay away from these if you can.

How to choose a soup!

Use the following checklist to compare soups when you are in the supermarket. For each category there is a good and best option as it can be tricky to find soups that fit the best criteria for every section.

• Vegies and/or legumes are the main ingredient on the ingredients list (more than 50% is best)
• At least 2g fibre or more per serve (4g per serve is best)
• At least 5g protein or more per serve (10g per serve is best)
• Less than 3g saturated fat per serve (less than 1g per serve is best)
• Less than 800mg sodium per serve (less than 300mg is best)

Finally, check the portion size – a bariatric serve is approximately 1 cup so you might get 2 or more serves out of a regular pack.

If you’re a member of the LWAS Community, you’ll also get my best soup picks so you don’t need to spend hours comparing labels and can choose with confidence! If you’d like to know more about membership, click here.