5 reasons why soup is healthy for dieters and everyone else

I’m having a get together next week and have decided to turn it into a “soup and salad” party. While doing my online research, I found out that soup is an excellent food for anyone trying to lose weight or eat more healthfully. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Eating soup helps cut your intake of food. By having a bowl of low-calorie soup prior to a meal, you can cut your total mealtime intake of amount of food and calories. According to Penn State researchers, diners consumed 20 percent fewer calories when they had both the soup and entree compared to when they did not have soup. The authors cautioned people to pick low-calorie, broth-based soups that are about 100 to 150 calories per serving.

2. Soup is convenient. Thank goodness for Amy’s Soups. Not only are they organic, but many of them are low calorie, low fat, high fiber, vegetarian, and delicious! According to The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 97% of people who ate soup as part of a low-calorie diet thought soup was a valuable part of their weight loss plan.

Whether you buy Campbell’s, Amy’s, Progresso, or a store brand, there are many terrific healthy choices for soup. Read the labels, pick the healthiest ones, and stock your pantry! Canned soup takes a few minutes to heat up. So if you always have it around, you won’t be as tempted to cheat. Plus, it’s easy to take to work, and you can often find healthy soup on the menu at most restaurants.

3. Soup lowers the energy density of your diet. Since broth-based soups have a lot of water and relatively few calories per portion, it has lower energy density than other foods. By increasing the water content of your foods and decreasing the fat content, you lower your food’s energy density. If a food has low energy density, you can eat more of it.  Also, broth-based, vegetarian or lean meat soups that are water rich and low calorie actually encourage weight loss.

4. Soup is healthy. O.K., not the crab bisque with the heavy cream and sherry. Instead I’m talking about soups using beans, low sodium and low fat vegetable or chicken broth, lean meats, brown rice, barley, and of course, veggies. There’s something special about taking a bunch of healthy foods, adding water or broth, and heating it up. I don’t know if it’s the warmth of the soup that’s so satisfying or that it takes a while to eat. However, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating soup (like a chicken and rice soup) reduced calorie intake of subsequent meals more effectively than eating the ingredients (chicken and rice) separately followed by a glass of water.

5. Making healthy soup is easy. I’ll be making my famous Butternut Squash Soup (only 2 Weight Watcher POINTS per cup) since one of my guests is a vegetarian. (She has MS and swears the soup has restorative powers.) But I wanted to make another healthy soup that was not too labor intensive.

My husband hunts and has the meat processor make venison Italian sausage. Since venison sausage is as lean as turkey sausage once you cook it and drain off the fat, I thought it would be terrific in soup. Here are a few of the healthy and easy recipes I found:

• Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup from Kalyn’s Kitchen – Kalyn sticks to the South Beach Diet and uses Dreamfields Healthy Low Carb Pastato keep the carbs low.
• Italian Sausage Soup from the Cooking Light community boards. This recipe gives nutritional information and is about 5 Weight Watcher POINTS per serving.

But here’s the one I decided on. I liked that it used high fiber Northern beans instead of pasta – great if you’re eating gluten free. (Note: if you can’t tolerate gluten, make sure to check the labels of your favorite soup stock. Many brands add wheat. You may want to make your own.)

While there’s no nutritional information, since it’s close to the Cooking Light recipe and substitutes beans for pasta, I’m guessing it’s around 4 Weight Watchers POINTS per serving.

Italian Sausage Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 pound Italian sausage (use turkey or venison sausage)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 (14 ounce) cans beef broth (find a low or no fat version – or substitute vegetable broth)
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can great Northern beans, undrained (instead, drain, rinse and add some water)
• 2 small zucchini, cubed
• 2 cups spinach – packed, rinsed and torn
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

In a stockpot or Dutch oven, brown sausage with garlic. Stir in broth, tomatoes and carrots, and season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 15 minutes.

1. Stir in beans with liquid and zucchini. Cover, and simmer another 15 minutes, or until zucchini is tender.
2. Remove from heat, and add spinach. Replace lid allowing the heat from the soup to cook the spinach leaves. Soup is ready to serve after 5 minutes.

Note: to make it even healthier, add more of the tomatoes, carrots, zucchini and spinach. And try to use organic produce and broth whenever possible.

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Posted on April 2, 2008 in 5 Things/Ways Advice List,Gluten Free,Recipes,Soups and tagged as losing weight, weight loss, Weight Watchers

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