The cooler weather is approaching and it's the time of year when we start to swap our crispy summer salads for warm, nurishing soups. So this week on the Nutrition Couch podcast review, we take a look at two quick and easy, pre made soup options that you can find in the supermarkets. Hi, I'm Leanne Wood and I'm Suzie Burrow, and it's two of Australia's leading dieticians who specialize in
evidence based nutrition. We renew the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites that you can find in your local supermarket. So to kick yourself, Susie, are you a soup lover or not?
I am a massive soup lover And you know the soups I like mostly and I love going to America eventually because when you go there they have so many soups. You can get mushroom and this bean one and child. I know, yes, lobsters, lobster bus room. And I love in Hawaii. My friend Jamie, who always comes to Hawaii with me, will no cheesecake factory. We love the soup and half the sandwich. And you know, in Australia, we're getting more options now, but I have to be honest,
I do tend to make most of mine. I love a homemade soup. One of my favorites is one that I found in the Colos magazine last year, which is literally just bloody beans, tomato, pisada, leaks celery. It is so delicious. I throw kale in at the end, and if I leave it on the bench, Chris will eat the whole thing, it is so young. So I do have a couple of ones that I will buy, and indeed, I've recently done a trolley on this because there's so
many in supermarket. And I think the good thing actually Land is that there is so many more fresh pouches and fresh ones now compared to the old days where they did tend to be cup of soups or tin soups, which, let's be honest, are often higher in sodium and higher
in additives. Whereas I couldn't believe really how many great fresh ones there were in the little containers at very reasonable prices, and also the pouches, which is a way that manufacturers can make them without as many additives, things
like added salts and things to keep them fresh. And I think the thing for me is it's not inexpensive to make a batch of soup because if you are adding leaks, celery, onion as the base, then things like celery, kale, spinach, and you know, it adds up, and particularly if you have the leggings are cheap, but the stocks are not. If you get a no added salt stock, they can be ten dollars per container. Now I guess we'd make
our own stock in an ideal world. So I find some of my soups are up to twenty dollars worth of ingredients, which you may or may not consume the whole lot. Whereas if you can get a packet soup like we're showing today for four or five dollars for a couple of serves, it's hard to go past them cost wise. So I think they can be a really
cost effective option too. And it's just options, as we said, you know, generally speaking, the cup soups tend to be the most processed and the highest in additives and particularly salt and even flavor enhances like MSG. The tin ones in general are pretty good, but again they have a lot more additives, whereas my preference for my clients and sharing today on the nutrition couch. Is those fresh pots outstanding. You really can't fault them, and there's a huge number
of good ones. But the ones I thought we would talk about today are a couple of the pouches because they I guess you don't have to keep them cold, they store for longer, and the pantry, you know, you can travel with them. There's so many different ones. You know, in the past we've talked about the plant protein range, which we're fans of. But I chose two different ones today to go through. One because I wanted to showcase one of my favorites. So I wanted just to compare,
so full disclosure. But that's the process, isn't it. And we go through we don't. We just sort of go through and think what tkills they are fancy on the day, and so these were a couple that sprang to mind, but there's a million others. It was just I sort of tried to pick like for like. I didn't want to compare a pouch to a tin. So we've gone for pouches just as the sort of preferential one. And also Lee and I also found the fresh ones. There
were so many good ones. I couldn't really differentiate between the brands. They were all pretty good, particularly the veggie bases, so hence going for the pouches. So the first one I've chosen is the hind Sea of the Day seven veg with garden herbs, And as I said, the reason I chose this was because it matched the ones the other one I wanted to talk about. So this is a four hundred and thirty gram packet, so quite hardy four dollars, so two dollars per serve, very reasonable for meal.
A quick scan of the ingredients is pretty strong land It's seventy two percent vegetables, and if we break that down, it's tomato, pump and potato, green and red capsicum's, zucchini, carrot, sweet potato. So a really nice mix because I think one of the things that always screams out to me with soup is if you look at the ingredients and it's all potato, it's really not giving you the vegetable bulk or the range of nutrients you would get from
brightly colored vegetables. So that sort of turns me off a little bit when I see a lot of potato water cream. So it does have a little bit of cream to give it some flavor. Mace thickener. There's no cause for concern with Maze is an additive. It's just to give it some bulk herbs, including parsley, salt, brown sugar, flavor enhances, the three six three five soy sauce, curry powder, spice.
So overall it's pretty clean, but it does have things like sugar added, salt added, but flavor enhances, which we've talked about before. I'm not the biggest fan of.
We have a look at nutritionals.
They're saying it's one serve per pack. I think that's a big serve, Laan, and I would definitely make that be two serves if it was me, I.
Could definitely eat that in one sef you reckon.
Okay, Yeah, I think they're quite heavy, and I tend to use super as aside for clients. So I'll say, have a sandwich or a wrap and a soup, so I guess it's how you're having it. If you were having this just with a slice of protein toast, it could be a meal absolutely. So it is only one hundred and eighty calories. There's an error on that nutritional label. One hundred and eighty calories per serve or seven seven
five kilogels, so you're right, it's quite low. Overall, three point nine grams of protein, three grams of fat, zero point seven saturated, thirty three point one grams of carbohydrate, so roughly equivalent to two slices of bread. Seven point seven grams of sugars, which is pretty high. Oh sorry, seven that's per served. Three point three grams of sugar perur teen point two grams of sugars perserve, so quite high. And nine hundred and eighty milligrams of sodium, which is not insignificant.
Sort of.
We don't talk a lot about salt on the Nutrition Couch podcast because I guess sodium is sort of down our list of areas we like to chat about, but it's not unimportant. You know, as a recommendation, you're trying to have less than two thousand milligrams of sodium per day, so this is almost half your recommended DAILA upper intake, which you would argue Leand with the soup you get a lot of potassium. It's good for us, so you're
going to get some salt. But this isn't a low sodium soup by any means, but I don't like the sugars on it fourteen grams of sugars perserve, and I really don't like the flavoringhants are on it.
Yeah, the six throe five.
I haven't actually tried it, so it probably tastes pretty good, but it certainly wouldn't be my I think there's much better options out there without flavor andhancism. To be honest with heines, there're a big company. I'm a disappointed they shouldn't be using flavor enhancers in soup when there's many other options they could use herb spices, et cetera. And I think the protein a little bit low. Yes, it's a vegetable soup. It's got too much added sugar. So is it better than a big mac?
Of course?
Is it better than a cuppa soup?
Of course?
But is it the best pouch soup out there? No, no, it is not.
And for those looking at the nutrition label where we're saying the MSG added if you look under contains flavor and hands is six three five. That's the added MSG or the monocidium glutamate in that in that package soup. So I think what the problem with this would be is. People would look at that and think, okay, veggi soup great, low calorie great, like you know, less than two hundred calories for a meal, you think great. But the bulk of that is just carbohydrate. So what do people put
with soup, Susie. They put bread, they put toast, or they put a roll with carbohydrate. So you're getting a massive whack of carbohydrate with this meal, very minimal fat, very minimal proteins. You've got nothing there to balance out the carbohydrate or slow down the digestion of the carbohydrate in that as well. So I would probably I normally like to use soupers and meal susy, But like you, I would probably just do half of this, add some protein in there, add a little bit of healthy fat
in there as well. So actually adding a little bit of say chicken rest in there and adding I don't know, it's another sort of fat maybe on the side or something as well. Do you really try to balance it out to make that a better meal. If not, you're basically just eating a big bowl of carbohydrate. You I'd toast the side of that even more carbohydrate. You're just not going to feel very full for very long that's
probably the downside of something like this. Although it is low calorie, there is a ton of veggies in there. They're definitely bonuses in there. But I would probably like to see that protein a lot higher and the fat contwn a little bit higher as well, if I was looking to actually balance this out as a proper meal.
And of course we are being fussy because this is our product review segment. We're not coming here to say souper is bad or veggie soup is bad. It's our job on these podcasts to really break down what's going on with supermarket products. And we're certainly leanne because we've had a little bit of feedback from people saying online, you're recommending homemade soup. Well, of course we recommend homemade soup,
but sometimes we need quick and easy options. So this is really breaking down out of the ones that are available. That's the reference point. We're only comparing these two products, as opposed to saying across the board, you're better to have homemade or non sort of package soup in general. All right, So the second one that I wanted to go through is actually one of my favorites. I don't have a relationship with this company by any means. But this is one of the pouchrips that I actually really
like myself and buy. It's the Lazupa Kale and Quinwa pouch. Now la Zupa have several different varieties of soup. They have a bowl, they have a cup of soup, and they have the pouches. Now they're bowls and cup of soup are not my favorite. The bowls are really really high in sodium. So it's only the pouches that I like. And I really like this flavory. And so it's five hundred and forty grams that retails for five dollars. Definitely
I get two serves out of it. This one is recommending two serves as opposed to the Heinzwe It does recommend it to be one, which is slightly smaller.
So when Lehn, I.
Look at this ingredient list, it's just so beautiful. So chicken stop fifty eight percent, which is water, chicken, carrot, onion, celery, salt, then lentils, onions percent, corn, kale, brown rice, kinoa, herbs. That's it.
Oh, I love it.
It is so clean, perfection, like it is so clean. I actually don't know how they make it taste so good. I think it's just an old school stock, which as we know, is really flavorsome and delicious if you would make it yourself at home. I love this taste. It's so young.
Now.
Admittedly though, you wouldn't say it's a meal because when we take a look at the nutritionals per serve, keep in mind this two saves per pack. It's only looking at it laughing. It's so low, less than one hundred calories three hundred and ninety shuichilodels but leane. It's got five grams of protein literally, no fat, two point nine gram of sugars all naturally occurring, four grams of dietary fiber, and seven hundred less than seven hundred milligrams of sodium.
So it's the downside. It's not a meal. It's really a free vegetable rich addition. So you would have to have if you were having this as a meal, you would have to have, say, crackers with tuna or salmon on top, or a slice of protein toast with it. But in terms of quality of soup, this is the most outstanding nutritional panel I reckon I've ever seen, and it tastes good because some of them. So I saw
this one in coal. It was brocoli cauliflower soup and I thought fantastic because I don't really like broccoli, but it's good for us. And I thought, how fantastic a broccoli coliflower soup with parmesan. But I couldn't eat it. It wasn't tasting taste choice.
I actually think I had the exact same one. A company sent me one, and I couldn't post about it because it tasted awful as well, and I won't need the bread.
And I wanted it to be so delicious and I thought, great, I can eat some broccoli, and it was just so that's the other thing. We need it to be tasting good.
Yeah, my one was it was plant based. It was like broccoli, and for the cheese, it was like a cheesy broccoli, but the cheesy was like c H e Z, you know, like a vegan cheese. And they use nutritional, nutritional yeast flakes, which I love when I'm a massive fan of but oh the texture that tastes it was awful. I couldn't do it. I was like, no, I can't do it. So I'm awful. Veggie based soups, But you're right,
they have to they have to taste good. And this this bass I think with the chicken stock and the onion and the celery and the lentils and the corn, I just think it's a perfect combination of veggies. So this is a wonderful addition to tie you over between meals, isn't it, particularly coming into the winter months, or.
To bulk up a meal. Yeah, to have with your lunch, to just get some delicious veg cheese. And it's so good this suit. You don't even have to add cheese on the top. It's so nice. But the other thing is, if you were to make this soup, if you first of all made the chicken stock, you would have to get a carcass obviously and have had the chicken or pay for that. Now, a clean stock like that with not much in it is going to cost six at least eight dollars. Then if you had to buy kale celery,
your soup's going to be quite pricey. So I think for five dollars for two serves, from a cost effective perspective, particularly if you're only cooking for one or two people, this is an outstanding product now in that pouch range, there's several they're all pretty good. There's a chicken, one pumpkin, tomato. They're all pretty good in terms of their nutrition. The ingredient listare all clean. But I just really like this flavor, so see what you think. But it absolutely wins my
soup every time. I think it's outstanding. The only downside is it's very low calorie, so you would need a bit more to bock it up as a meal. But if you got home late from work you weren't very hungry and just wanted a quick soup, keeping these and lee and you don't even have to refrigerate them and again in the cupboard, so handy.
Yeah, that's perfect. Or you know, if you've over indulged in a few too many Easter eggs, there might be a lovely any alternative with a little bit of protein on the side or added into vulcan up, it could be a lovely alternative.
And we will say, you know, if we ever do sponsored product reviews, we will very clearly say none of these are sponsored or we don't have associations. If we do, we will always say it, I don't have a sup association. It's just a product I've liked for several years that we wanted to highlight. But you know, as we said, in general, you're not going to go wrong with any kind of veggie based soup out there. Pouches are good.
Just to a quick scan though, and try and avoid the ones with added sugars and things like flavor enhancers where you can the higher the vegetable content the better, The higher the fiber and protein the better, and the lower the sodium and you'll be on the right track. So if we've missed any soups, we'd love to see ones that you also enjoy. As I said previously, we've done a plant protein one which we also very much
like that that's more of a meal. And yet any of those fresh ones in supermarkets, the woolies, the coals, the darrakai, are all very strong nutritionally with a really high veggie content. So the more suit we have, the better. There's really strong research to show that if you have a bowl of veggie based soup before a meal, it can reduce calorie intake by as much as one hundred calories per meal just getting that bulk in your diet.
So I'm a massive fan of soup and I think enjoy more soup over the next few months and your body and your nutrition will benefit of.
It, all right, Suzzy. So that brings us to the end of the Nutrition Couch product review for another week. We would love if you guys to subscribe to the podcast. That way, we automatically downloaded and delivered into your inbox every Sunday and Wednesday for the product reviews as well. Please leave us some feedback, asks, your questions on our Instagram and Facebook pages. We are at the Nutrition Couch podcast on our socials and we will catch you guys
next Sunday for the new episode. See you next week.
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