Expecting food to taste good is a legitimate expectation and guidelines for eating healthy need to acknowledge the legitimacy of this expectation. But before we get to that …
It’s the middle of May here in New York’s Hudson Valley but there’s still enough chill in the air to justify a bowl hot steaming soup. Probably the last batch of the season however so when this pot is gone, no more soup until October or November.
Making my own means I decide which ingredients to use – extra virgin olive oil, lots of aromatics, and the right amount of salt for palatability. I wish one of the commercial manufacturers would come up with a way to make soup the way I like it. Current soup brands use too much salt and brands that market low salt versions are bland.
Nothing comes for free and soup making is time consuming – lots of chopping and prep work – not to mention the hour or two it takes to slowly soften those dry little green half sized peas plus putting the soup through my food mill, portioning it out, and freezing the units.
That’s why I wish I had a better option. But I don’t …
All my soups are NOVA friendly because they are all freshly prepared with minimally processed and culinary processed ingredients. Listed in descending order by weight, the ingredients are water, green split peas, onion, carrot, fennel, olive oil, parsley, salt.
Despite all the quality ingredients, the soups fails the test.
Why you maybe asking? Too much salt.
I’m a bit of a contrarian dietitian here because first I make the soup that tastes good to me, then I go back and run the numbers to determine the stats. The label posted above is based on a generous cup, a little more that the reference amount of 245 grams. Usually home cooking is an excellent strategy for reducing dietary sodium. There are exceptions however and the most notable exception is soup.
My soups are not nearly as high as commercial brands which have almost twice as much sodium. And that is why, for me at least, commercial brands taste much too salty.
THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW
Palatable is a loaded word.
My fellow dietitians prefer to use words like nutrient-dense and healthy dietary patterns.
On the other side of the binary divide, cooks, chefs, food manufacturers, and eaters talk a lot about good tasting food. These folks may not actually use the word palatable but there is all round expectation that food should taste good.
Healthy is important, but enjoyment is essential. So even when I use all the tricks in the usual dietitian’s healthy eating playbook and it’s not enough, I say to myself, palatable beats healthy and it’s okay to break the rules.
