Salt levels in soup spill over

Before sitting your family down to a ‘healthy’ lunch of soup and bread, check the salt content

YOU’RE IN the supermarket and, mindful as ever of the importance of maintaining a healthy diet for your family, you skip past the unhealthy crisps and chocolate aisles, opting inside for the ready-to-eat soup section, where you select several options for lunches for your family. But did you know that most of these products contain more salt per portion than a packet of crisps?

According to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), the recommended daily salt intake is just 6g a day, but eating just one portion of pre-prepared soup, combined with two slices of bread (0.8g of salt), can mean you are already two-thirds of the way towards your total daily allowance! Not the healthy option you thought after all then, given that too much salt raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Despite efforts to reduce the salt content of processed food in recent years, salt levels remain nonetheless high, and, according to a new survey by UK organisation Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash), out of the 575 ready-to-eat soup ranges examined, 99 per cent contained more salt per portion than a packet of crisps.

Many of the worst offenders are on the shelves of Irish supermarkets, with soups offered by Irish brands also having high salt levels.

The launch in recent years of soups in pouches, aimed at offering a more filling alternative to regular soup, is a key factor in the significantly higher salt content hidden in the seemingly healthy choice of soup.

For example, Batchelors Soupfulls Classic Beef Vegetable has a salt content of 2.25g per 300g serving, while a serving of Knorr Special Recipe Soup Thai Vegetable will give you almost half of your daily salt allowance, at 2.85g.

And, given that these pouches can come in bigger sizes than the standard 300g serving, the salt content may even be higher if you consume all the soup yourself.

For example, Batchelors Soupfulls range comes in pouches of 400g, with a total salt content of 3.0g for its Classic Beef Vegetable product, while the Erin Soupfulls range is also sold in 400g pouches, giving a total salt content for its Creamy Chicken, Potato and Mushroom soup of 2.6g.

Tinned soups also tend to be high in salt, with Baxters Luxury Courgette Gruyere product containing 2.4g of salt per portion.

While fresh soups sold in refrigerated cabinets generally have a lower salt content than their can or pouch counterparts, there are, nonetheless, some notable offenders, with Marks & Spencer regularly appearing on the “bad” list.

Its King Prawn Noodle soup, for example, has a salt content of 2.4g per 300g portion, while its Meataball Minestrone soup, part of its new Full for Longer range, has 2.3g of salt per 400g portion.

If you’re looking for a low-calorie option, remember that even if the product is low in fat, the salt content can still be high. Heinz Weight Watchers Lentil Carrot soup for example, has a salt content of 2g per serving, so a better option might be to consider Avonmore’s Low Fat fresh soup range, where the salt levels are about 0.9g.

Be careful also of eating soup in sandwich bars – the very worst offenders in the UK survey were for chains such as Eat, Cafe Nero and Pret a Manger, where the salt content in soup was as high as 8g a portion!

In general, the best option is to make your own soup but if you have to choose, stay away from those featuring high-salt ingredients such as bacon and cheese, and choose instead vegetable and tomato-based ones.

Tesco’s Cream of Chicken Soup has just 0.9g of salt, or for something a bit different, Knorr’s Special Recipe Soup Indian Chicken, has a salt content of 0.94g per serving.