Taste test: fresh soup with no added sugar.

I’m a soup freak. I love enormous bowls of hot soup that warm my bones and soul. But increasingly, added sugar in soups disgust me. I’m no saint - I have a two lemon or chocolate muffins a night habit - but some things aren’t meant to be sweet and cloying. And if you start a meal with something that has loads of added sugar in it, everything else that follows will taste bland by comparison. So many vegetables have a delightful natural sweetness, from peas, carrots and good tomatoes to parsnips, and these all taste of duty rather than pleasure if you’ve preceded them with something sickly sweet.

So it’s great that so many food manufacturers are making soups without added sugar. Heinz deserves a mention here for creating versions of its tinned cream of tomato and vegetable soups with no added sugar or artificial sweeteners (its sugar-free ketchup, meanwhile, is as sweet as its sugary variety because of added sucralose. Which makes the company’s claim that it contains ‘no artificial colours, flavourings or preservatives’ ring a little hollow.)

As far as the soups are concerned, I’ve had the no added sugar vegetable one several times, and although it is adequate, it couldn’t be mistaken for fresh soup. The vegetables are uniformly diced and probably straight out of freezer bags and padded with cubes of potato and lots of pasta (always a bit of a cop-out when it comes to something like soup which I expect to be healthy), and it’s been thickened with cornflour, which again, is not particularly what I want when looking for a warming but healthy starter.

So I’ll concentrate here on fresh soups without added sugar. Judging by the number of varieties multiplying on the shelves, this is a lucrative niche. I could make a joke about the bourgeois wanting to eat healthily without making any effort to cook from scratch, but I won’t because I’m probably one of them (my disability is an excuse but I rarely cooked even back when I was healthy.)

I was excited when I first discovered Soupologie. Their tubs of fresh soup seemed to be just what I was looking for. Initially, they had a pea based one and a spinach based one. The first time I had the former, I was very impressed. It was naturally sweet, with the delicious flavour of garden peas, and thick enough to satisfy me. But within a few weeks, I found that the product I bought had become much thinner, and had the consistency of green water. I wrote to the company but didn’t receive any sort of meaningful reply.

The pea soup has now become a ‘green’ soup, but the main ingredient apart from water is still peas (equal with spinach, at 13%. So why have a separate spinach soup?). But I don’t buy it anymore because despite the flavour being pleasing, soup with the consistency of water isn’t satisfying or filling. I also noticed that they add maltodextrin from maize. Which is cheating in my book, because when I buy ‘no added sugar’ substances, I expect the sweetness to come from the natural ingredients - in this case, the peas. And actually, there is as much apple in there as peas, and although apples are wonderful, we all know that when manufacturers want to make something taste *really* sweet without being seen to ‘add sugar’, they add apples. Of course, apples consist mainly of sugar and carbohydrates, it’s just that the sugar is in the form of fructose, which some people believe is healthier than sucrose. It isn’t. An apple also contains fibre, and so apples are part of a healthy diet, but using apples as a sweetener in something with ‘no added sugar’ - and maltodextrin ‘from maize’ too - is sneaky and dishonest.

I was never as keen on its spinach soup as the pea-based one but again, It would be fine if it was thicker, but if I wanted green water I’d find a mossy river.

Tidefords do fresh soups without added sugar. These tend to be heartier than the Soupologie ones, with a thicker consistency. My main problem with them is that if I’m having soup, I want it to contain several of my five (or ten, depending on how much of a slave you are to our bowel) a day, preferably the most nutritious. Spinach contains vitamins A and K as well as the antioxidants beta carotene and lutein, which are thought to impart many health benefits including possibly some degree of protection against cancer. Carrots are also rich in Vitamin A and K and beta carotene, and in potassium and Vitamin C. (The latter is denatured by high heat, which is one reason why one shouldn’t boil soup - the others being impaired flavour and the increased propensity of burns if you eat your soup balanced on your lap. Says the person who was a patient in the Chelsea and Westminster for seven weeks following third-degree burns from soup which necessitated debridemint and two skin grafts.)

Broccoli is another vegetable stuffed with goodness. Like its fellow cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflour, it helps reduce inflammation. Inflammation has been linked to heart disease - this mug stayed thin and never smoked but still managed to develop serious coronary artery disease through two inflammatory auto immune illnesses. Rich in vitamin K and vitamin C, it also contains the minerals, manganese, and potassium, and folate, which helps to prevent neural tube disorders in babies in pregnant mothers.

Kale, peas, and chard are also packed with vitamins such as A, C, and K, and minerals. So these green and orange vegetables are the ones I like to see in my soups, as well as antioxidant and Vitamin C-rich tomatoes and red-peppers. Tomatoes are also full of lycopene, thought to help protect against prostatic cancer.

Which is why the Tideford soups disappoint me a little, despite being thick, appetising and tasty. Although they are full of other nutrients such as proteins and complex carbohydrates - there’s a lentil and spinach dahl one, and lentils are a pulse packed with complex carbs and protein - they just don’t look vegetabley enough to me. The spinach only makes up a small amount of the lentil and spinach dahl variety (8%), and it contains coconut cream, which, though tasty, is high in saturated fats. The lentil and kale one similarly is better as a light meal substitute than a starter full of a variety of vegetables. There are also spiced parsnip and butternut squash flavours - again, tasty and nutritious but quite carb-rich. Wonderful for lunch or a light dinner. Not necessarily a replacement for one’s 5 or 10 a day, though.

I’m not going to review Yorkshire Provender soups because most of them contain cheese, which

1- renders them more hearty meals than starter soups,

and

2 - makes them unsuitable for vegans.

I’m sure cheeseaholics like my husband would approve, but they are not for me.

Then there are Bol soups. I enthusiastically bought the tomato and red pepper when a dear friend was coming round for lunch. I love a delicious tomato and basil soup, and the combination of tomato and red pepper is also intoxicating.

The soup wasn’t exactly what I expected. On the plus side, it was more substantial, containing 6% chickpeas. On the minus side, the chickpeas and a hint of chilli robbed it of the pureness of flavour of tomato and red-pepper.

I currently have the green Bol waiting in my fridge. It looks like my cup of soup, with its advertised flavour, being garden pea and spinach, but on scanning the ingredients, I see that the thick consistency is not due to masses of the green vegetables but to beans - again, very nutritious, containing protein as well as carbs - and potatoes. And again, the saturated fat from coconuts. Whatever happened to delicious olive oil, healthy and with numerous benefits?

My latest discovery in the fresh soup area has been the Re-nourish range. I discovered these in my hospital admission last week, incongruously lined up alongside the sugary drinks in the fridge cabinet of the newsagent in the Royal Free Hospital. Having just bought my body weight in chocolate bars from the in-hospital branch of M&S (I needed a pick-me-up, but man, M&S chocolate contains way more sugar than cocoa), they were the perfect foil to those unnecessary calories, and my long-suffering husband bought some to bring in for me in a thermos the next day.

I was intrigued by the favours. The tomato one contained passion flower. Would it be strangely floral? Actually, no. There was a hint of fragrance from the flower, but also the unadulterated taste of good tomatoes, unthickened by stodge such as flour, or heavy pulses or beans. It was light and refreshing, and I loved it.

So, of course we had to make another visit to the shop, and the next day, husband was instructed to please bring the kale, spinach, and turmeric one.

Again, how refreshing to drink something light, tasting, simply of the essence of vegetables with a hint of heat from turmeric, which also has health benefits. Something that wouldn’t fill me up, but was just an aperitif. A way of ingesting fresh vegetables in an enlivening way, not weighed down by weighty carbs.

When I came out of hospital, I discovered that there is also a roasted carrot and ginger flavour. This too is subtle and tasty, with a tiny kick up the bahookie from the ginger, but not a great big ‘Cope with it, wimp’ blast of offputting fiery heat or spice. These soups are not thick, so I’m not sure why I forgave them their consistency when I was so harsh on Soupologie. I think it’s because they are more delicate and fragrant. And they are not as watery and rip-offy as Soupologie’s stuff.

My husband is a little absent-minded in the kitchen, giving me coffee when I ask for tea and full caffeine tea when I ask for a mint tea. So it was not surprising that he mixed up the soups, and one night, instead of heating up two containers of the roasted carrot and garlic managed to mix one of them with another of tomato and passion flower. In fact, the combination was delicious, the two flavours not clashing at all, but emerging in a symbiotic marriage of naturally sweet, light vegetables.

These have become my favoured fresh soups of the day. They are light enough to make a delicious starter and pure enough to feel as if you’ve had a vegetable, vitamin, mineral and antioxidant blast without a herd of elephants - flour, potatoes, chick peas, lentils, coconut oil - trooping in in carrot uniform. Of course, chickpeas and lentils are highly nutritious foods and an important source of protein in vegans and vegetarians. But I’m looking for soup as a starter and as a substitute for other vegetables. I can’t eat hard vegetables because they obstruct me and cause repeated projectile vomiting requiring hospital admission, and I can’t eat salad anymore because the vinaigrette on it causes me to bleed from my gastritis, and landed me in hospital last week with a haemoglobin of one half to one third normal. (5.7g/dl - impressive, eh?)

But for those of you who prefer a more substantial ‘meal replacement’ soup, Re-nourish also do a split-pea one which is thick and full of flavour (although crying out for a sprinkling of salt. I readily forgive food manufacturers for putting too little salt in as many people have hypertension, and some cardiac failure/renal problems and have to watch salt intake.)

So Re-nourish will nourish me, and they are so full of goodness and delicious with it that I don’t even feel guilty stuffing two Sainsbury’s lemon or chocolate Finest Muffins with melty centres after my main course.

This healthier eating business is quite good fun really.