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Soup Hacks with Chef Wendell!

Everybody loves soup. It’s quick and fills your belly. When you’re in hurry and no time to cook, soup’s the perfect go-to solution! Soups can be the perfect delivery system for eating more vegetables and grains into your daily diet. Or not.

Chef Wendell says, “Whoa there. Back up the ole soup wagon. Your favorite brand of canned or boxed may seem like a healthy meal, but are canned and boxed soups as nutritious as advertised? Are they as nutritious as homemade?”

Today on Indy Style, we find out!Fact:

The nutrients in our fresh food are more delicate / fragile than we realize. They can be easily leached out by age, (OLD), high heat, or destroyed during processing.

Health concerns: canned / boxed soups

• Vegetables cook to oblivion has MUCH less nutrition than raw or under cooked vegetables.

• BPA-In addition, homemade soup is BPA free and less expensive per volume than store-bought canned soup.

• BPA- associated with reproductive abnormalities and a heightened risk of certain cancers.

• BPA can leech from the liner into the food. A test of canned foods (including soups) found that almost all of the name-brand foods contained some BPA

• BPA positively associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Lang et al. 2008). So, that’s another thing to think about when considering eating canned soups.

• Fat-A one-cup serving of a cream-based canned soup may contain 7 grams of fat, and fat may account for more than half the calories in the soup.

• Worse yet, the fat in these soups tend to be saturated fat-assumed to cause heart disease by raising cholesterol in the blood. Fat is fat is fat.

• Salt-Canned food manufacturers use sodium as a flavoring and preservative,

• 1 can of soup often contains more sodium than you should eat in a single meal.

• High-sodium diet is a risk factor for high blood pressure and heart disease.

• One can of chicken vegetable soup provides 259 calories, 9 grams protein and a whopping 2,139 milligrams of sodium.

Soup Hacks and Tips:

This is great way to use, not throw away, aging vegetables etcetera, in your crisper-drawer. Take charge of our health.

• Homemade is #1: you can add the best seasoning of all: Love

• Soup Party!! Invite some friends over, crack a bottle of wine, then everyone cooks their favorite recipe, and then splits them up in freezer containers for the future. Voila!

• Avoid high-fat cream soups and choose broth-based varieties instead.

Do you cringe at the sight of vegetables & healthy foods?

• For extra vitamins, minerals and fiber sneak in fresh or frozen vegetables, diced tomatoes, spinach or cabbage.

• Add high-fiber whole grains like brown rice and whole wheat pasta for white rice or regular pasta in your recipes. (Quinoa, brown rice, pasta or Basmati rice)

• Add flax or chia seed.

• Fresh herbs.

• Cooked beans for protein and fiber.

• Cooked pumpkin puree, refried beans, or mashed sweet potato.

• Fiber-flax or chia-Ring the Bell of fiber Freedom!

• Want to remove excess fat from your soup? Simply take a lettuce leaf and draw it across the surface of the soup. The excess fat sticks to the leaf.

To learn more about Chef Wendell or his books, “Eat Right Now,” visit www.chefwendell.com.