What You May Not Know About Soup
Few things are more comforting than a piping hot bowl of soup on a cold winter night. It satisfies your hunger and warms your insides. Since soup is a common staple in our diet, it’s easy to take it for granted. There’s more to soup than meets the taste buds, though. Consider these soup-related facts and tips the next time you sit down to a hearty bowl.
- The word soup is believed to have its genesis in the Sanskrit words su and po that mean “good nutrition.”
- Soups make great filler food for people on a diet. If you do not want to eat much during a meal, start with a bowl of low-calorie soup. It will fill you up so you eat less later. It also makes a great light snack and is certainly a better option than common sugary or fat-laden processed snacks.
- Notice excess fat floating on the surface of your soup? Draw a lettuce leaf across the surface of the soup to remove it. The fat will adhere to the leaf. You can also skim off the fat using a large spoon.
- Soups provide a perfect medium for infiltrating your kids’ diets with vegetables. Even if they reject veggies in plain form, they may scarcely notice them when they’re floating nonchalantly in a bowl of soup. Stir veggies like cabbage, tomatoes, and spinach into a boiling pot of soup. It will soften their textures so they go down easily.
- Creamy soups are delicious, but they may not be diet-friendly. A cup of whipping cream can add 700 calories and 74 grams of fat to a batch of soup. Stick to low-calorie soups with minimal trans fats, saturated fats, sugar, and salt.
- Soups can provide a burst of energy. When you are too busy to sit down to a full dinner, a bowl of soup can fill you up and provide a quick meal substitute. Soups often contain ingredients from all four food groups so they’re also a balanced meal.