Vegetable Soup
For good nutrition, soup can be a healthy, satisfying quick meal. Soup can also help with weight control, since it is naturally eaten at a slower pace than most other foods. Soup can be made in larger batches and frozen for those times when you may be too busy or tired to cook.
With most all of us having busy lives and too little time to spend in the kitchen, starting a soup from scratch may not be practical. However, canned soups and soup mixes are often very high in sodium, which aggravates blood pressure and water retention. Furthermore, low sodium choices are hard to find, more expensive and not very flavorful.
Here is one solution: you can stretch the sodium in canned soup by adding more low-sodium ingredients, such as no-salt-added canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables, cooked rice, cooked noodles, or cooked meat. Here is a recipe for turning a can of vegetable soup into a healthful meal:
- 1 can vegetable soup
- 1 potato, washed and diced; leave skin on
- 3 cups mixed frozen vegetables
- 1-1 1/2 cups water
- 1 cup cooked chicken (1 can of rinsed beans, such as white or kidney beans may be substituted)
Place all ingredients in a large pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower heat to simmer and cook until potato is tender, about 10 minutes. Serve hot with a large tossed salad and a slice of whole grain toast.
It is fun to experiment with other type of canned soups. For the lowest fat content, use the broth based soups such as chicken noodle or vegetable. Other ideas for ingredients to add include shredded fresh cabbage, zucchini or other fresh vegetables.
Contributed by Janice Baker, B.Sc., M.B.A., R.D., CDE, CNSC
