SLURP IT UP
Some soups are full of calories, but this one’s OK. The Dish,
DISH: Corn chowder RESTAURANT: Whole Foods Market LOCATION: Four stores in the GTA PRICE: $4.99
Moments before the big reveal, Krishna Sookrit admits she is nervous to learn the nutritional truth of a soup she has long believed to be a healthy end to her day.
“It’s full of chunky vegetables. It seems light. It tastes really good. I just hope — I really hope — that it’s not too fattening.”
The soup in question is the corn chowder on offer at Whole Foods Market. It’s one of several served piping hot from large soup kettles, in the grab-and-go section of the store.
Sookrit, who swings through Whole Foods’ Unionville store after her evening yoga class, ladles a smallsized portion for a light and effortless dinner.
“I get it once a week, sometimes twice. I find the soup is perfect after my class.”
Sookrit guesses the small portion of chowder — the amount in a 354 mL container — contains 400 calories and 20 grams of fat.
She squeals with delight to find out the soup only has 175 calories and two grams of fat.
“How many? Two?” she asks, at first thinking she had misheard the number. “Are you kidding me? It’s better than I thought. This is such a nice surprise.”
It’s not often the Dish gets to pass on good news. It’s a nice feeling.
Usually, I hear sighs of disappointment after divulging the laboratory’s nutritional analysis. Sometimes, the response to an astonishingly high calorie count is a long, drawn out “Noooooooo.” Once, I was labelled a heartbreaker for revealing the fat content of a favourite roti.
Registered dietitian Zannat Reza is also pleased to find out that the lab analysis for Whole Foods’ corn chowder backs up the soup’s nutritious ingredients.
According to the laminated label posted over the soup kettle, the chowder is made with a mix of vegetables, including onion, potato, red bell pepper and corn, butter, flour and milk, vegetable stock and a simple list of seasonings. Reza says Sookrit, and others who consider a smallsized soup to be a main meal, should think about adding a make-yourown salad to complete dinner. With just 175 calories and 7 grams of protein, the corn chowder will likely leave many diners feeling hungry shortly after their final slurp.
“Research indicates people should aim to have between 25 to 30 grams of protein at each meal,” Reza says. A small salad topped with a palmsized amount of protein-rich foods, such as chickpeas, grilled chicken and nuts and seeds, will meet that goal. Due to the chowder’s sodium content, Reza says adding a salad is a better way to add quality calories to dinner than bumping up to a larger portion of soup. The small portion of chowder contains 675 milligrams of sodium, which Reza says is about half the amount our bodies require in a day. Most restaurant soups are salty, some extraordinarily so. In 2013, the Dish revealed the corn chowder with blue crab and Thai basil served at the hugely popular Ravisoups contains 1,763 milligrams of sodium. For other comparisons, note that a small order (284 mL) of chicken noodle soup at Tim Hortons has 650 milligrams of sodium, while a 1 cup (250 mL) portion of Happy Planet Louisiana sweetcorn and red pepper soup contains 540 milligrams of sodium. The Happy Planet brand is sold at local Whole Foods Markets.
For diners on the search for superhealthy soups, Reza suggests scrutinizing nutrition numbers for ones that contain four grams of fibre and about 10 grams of protein for an appetizer-sized portion. It’s best, too, for soups to contain less than 750 milligrams of sodium per serving. Sookrit would like to see Whole Foods Market post nutrition numbers for their grab-and-go items. That way, she would have known long ago that her weekly order of corn chowder was indeed a smart choice. Soup lovers would hope — but can’t be sure — that the other broths, gumbos and bisques bubbling in Whole Foods’ kettles are also as healthy as they sound.
“I’m not sure why they are so afraid to publish these things,” Sookrit says. “Even if a food is high in calories, and you don’t bypass it, at least you know for choices later in the day.”
In the meantime, Sookrit can’t wait to tell her friends the calorie news.
“They are going to love knowing this,” she says. “Every time we find something that is delicious or good value or low fat, we share it.”