I am a big fan of irony, have been for ages. I couldn’t tell you how or when it started, but small things like the fact that I have to use a vacuum to get my broom clean make me grin even while they annoy me. I can even appreciate the fact that tomorrow I’m going to have to pay for parking in order to go to the parking office to buy a parking pass. It’s frustrating but deliciously funny at the same time.
The one exception I have found to this concept of delicious irony is canned soup. I’m not even talking the not-good for you condensed stuff. This is premium, don’t add water, healthy select style soup. Gourmet stuff even. You buy it thinking it’s a smart choice. Sure it’s a little high in sodium, you know this going in. But it’s quick, and easy, and costs less than cruddy drive-thru fast food. There’s even nutrition in there, it says so right on the label.
So you buy it and you take it to work (or in my case, eat it on your work at home lunch break). You pour the can into a soup mug and realize that you’re actually going to wind up eating two servings of soup, not one. So it’s even higher in sodium… Well, at least it still has nutrition and won’t break the bank, right? You heat it up, relish in the savory aroma, and take your first bite.
It’s at this point you’re hit square in the face with the only known example of non-delicious irony in the world: something that has 60% of your sodium for the day is bland and could use a little salt.
Not cool, canned soup makers. Not cool at all.
What most of us forget is that sodium doesn’t always come from sodium chloride aka the crystal stuff that tastes salty. Sodium is a naturally occuring mineral that is in most of the food you consume. More to the point, though, is the fact that sodium is used in a large number of preservatives and flavor enhancers. Sodium nitrate, monosodium glutamate, the list goes on. Each one of these ingredients adds to the sodium content of your can of soup without adding much to that savory, salty taste.
It’s maddening, really, enough to make you pull your hair out. But luckily, there is a solution: make your own soup.
Before you protest, let me assure you: if you can boil water, you can make your own soup. Find a decent recipe and run it through a site like NutritionData.com, which will give you a nutritional analysis based on the serving size you specify. No more looking at the serving size and wondering which child they were thinking of when they designated a 1/4 cup serving. No more paperless mathematics to determine what 38% times 2.5 servings per can works out to be.
Below is the NutritionData.com nutritional analysis for a basic chicken noodle soup recipe using homemade chicken stock. Before you start protesting about the fat content, know that the values are for the raw ingredients as they are given. When you make chicken stock you skim the fat off the top, so the overall calories and fat are lower. Notice the sodium value, a very manageable 23% per serving. And that means a real, soup mug sized serving, not some tiny child’s fist size serving.
When you make homemade soup, you can portion it out into freezer safe zip top bags and lie them flat to freeze. Put one in the fridge to thaw at night, take it to work and heat up the next day. You can even wash and re-use the bags if you want to be super frugal (and environmental) about it.
