Every winter I find myself searching for snacks that do double duty: warming and filling me up! This means copious consumption of soup! It can be cheap, hot, filling and (more often than not) quite yummy. I have seen the single serve Campbell's Soup at Hand sitting on my grocers shelf for a couple of years now, so I figured I would finally give them a try. While I usually skip canned soups due to the INSANE sodium amounts, the single serving, microwavable, convenient product grabbed my attention and demanded that I try it . So, I decided to let the sodium police off for the day, purchased a can of the Vegetable Beef and made my way home for a taste test.
The soup is very user friendly. It can be made in minutes and even features a sipping top allowing you to drink it straight from the can. Since I was at home (and prefer to eat my soup with a spoon) I poured it into a bowl, but I did appreciate the creativity of the folks over there at Campbell's. This soup is good. It's flavorful and surprisingly thick. While there were minuscule chunks of beef and veggies in it, it was mostly a thick broth. Also, I was pleasantly surprised at how generous the serving size appeared when dumped into a bowl (the can made it look like less). Overall this was a good snack. Lots of flavor, easy to make and sufficiently filling.
One can of Campbell's Vegetable Beef Soup (Soup at Hand) contains 60 calories (the website says 70 calories though), 1 gram of fat (0.5 of which is saturated), 10 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber and 3 grams of protein. But there is also 930 mg of sodium into each 10.5 ounce container. That's almost 50% of the daily allowance! And Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) makes an appearance in the ingredients list (as does HFCS).
I paid $2.39 for this, but I bought it at a more expensive grocery store so I imagine it's usually less. This might make an occasional appearance in my grocery shopping cart, but I can't see this being something I would reach for on a regular basis, mostly because of the high sodium content.