Superfood for our immune system
Is homemade best? What are the optimal ingredients to be using? And can you pick up a ready-made nutritious soup at the supermarket? Susie Burrell reports.
For as long as we can remember, soup has been known to be a superfood for the immune system. The hearty mix of veges, legumes and broth is known for its super-healing properties and brought to many a home at any sign of illness.
So as many of us try to optimise immune function and actively support respiratory health, is there any truth in the belief that soup, and chicken soup in particular, can support immunity?
And if so, is homemade best? What are the optimal ingredients to use? And can you pick up a ready-made nutritious soup at the supermarket?
From a nutritional perspective, literally all soups, whether they are pre-made or homemade, are good for us.
Soups are made from a base of water and veges, so all the nutrients are retained in the soup itself.
Not only is soup relatively low in kilojoules but it can also offer myriad key nutrients, including fibre, vitamins and minerals and even protein when the soup has a meat or bone-broth base.
Although some offerings, especially canned versions, can add extra salt into the diet, compared to other processed foods, soup is still relatively innocuous.
When it comes to immunity, it is soup made using bone broth that has been shown to support immune function.
Bones contain an amino acid called carnosine, which has been shown to help the body fight infection in its early stages by inhibiting the migration of infected cells around the body.
This means that a packet of two-minute chicken noodles is unlikely to be doing you any favours if you are sick, but if you do make your own soup by slowly cooking the bones into a broth, you are more likely to reap the benefits associated with bumping up your natural intake of carnosine.
Another key benefit of incorporating soup into your diet regularly is that soup is closely linked to weight control.
As a bowl of hearty soup is especially filling, it has been shown that starting with a bowl of vegetable-based soup before a meal can result in up to 400 fewer kilojoules being consumed at that meal. In addition, soup itself as a meal is a lowkilojoule, nutrient-dense food choice.
As such, it’s a relatively simple and safe weightloss strategy to swap a meal for a bowl of soup, even occasionally to help lower energy intake.
This can be particularly useful to know as temperatures drop and it is very easy to overdo it on the comfort food.
As is the case with many of our meals, yes, homemade soup is best. Here you can bulk up the vegetables and legumes your soup contains, use a bone broth or make your own for the potential immune-related benefits and control the amount of salt you add. This is not to say that all supermarket soups are a poor choices.
There is a growing range of pre-made liquid soups in supermarkets that contain little more than the vegetables and meat they claim to contain.
The next best option are tinned soups, although it is worth checking how much added salt they contain and opting for varieties that has at most 600-800mg sodium per serve.
The only option to steer well clear of is the packet cup-style soups which tend to be packed full of flavourings and salt, lacking the vegetable bulk and protein that fresh and tinned soups can have.
As the temperatures drop we all work hard to keep our immune system well-fuelled to help fight off bugs and infections, you will not go wrong with incorporating a hearty soup into your staple diet.
The secret to success will be in your choice of stock and loading as many vegetables and legumes into your soup as you can.
– Sydney Morning Herald
The secret to success will be in your choice of stock and loading as many vegetables and legumes into your soup as you can.