Progresso Light Italian-style Vegetable Soup has 0 points for weight watchers, 120 calories per can, and about 20g of carbs. That's not bad for a warm, filling soup that has 40% of your vitamin A!

Soup is a great food for any style of eating you choose. It is mostly water, so it fills you up. It often has a nice mix of healthy veggies in it. For example, this Italian-style vegetable soup has green beans, tomatoes, celery, carrots, peas, and spinach in it. It tastes delicious! Considering that the only vegetable many Americans eat is the potato, adding this soup into your weekly menu is a perfect way to improve that.

We all know how important hydration is to keep your body's metabolism going. Soup is a perfect way to get that water into you.

There's no fat of any kind in here. Zero. No cholesterol either.

You get 24% of your daily potassium! As mentioned above you also get 40% of your Vitamin A.

I'll note that the label breaks things out by SERVING and there are two servings per can. However, I have never known anyone who eats half a can of soup. They all eat the whole thing. If you are someone who does actually eat half a can, just go by the label numbers (or halve the ones I'm giving).

It also has the benefit of being always-ready and super easy. As long as you have a microwave nearby, you just pop it into a bowl, nuke it for 2 minutes, and eat. That means you can keep cans on your shelves at home, in your desk at work, and always have it within reach. It helps keep you from getting into an over-hungry state and making poor food decisions.

There are a few rotini noodles in here. I'd rather there were no noodles at all. For me there's squishy excess material that doesn't help my meal plan at all. Still, I imagine for some people they really want those noodles, so I understand the soup has to compromise to fit everyone's needs. At only 20g net carbs - with 8g of fiber! - it is still nicely healthy for you.

Of course it does mean it has wheat, egg, and milk in it, which is a shame for the allergic people out there.

One other potential downside - the whopping 940mg of sodium per can. What is up with soups and their high salt content. I could understand maybe 100 years ago that people had to overdose their soup with salt to let it survive safely. The salt is a natural preservative. However in our modern times do we really need 40% of our daily salt poured into this can just to keep it sanitary? Aren't our factories clean enough by this point?

So that is a perennial problem with all soups, and one we can keep working towards. In the meantime, make sure your life in general is low salt so that having this soup can be a normal part of your menu. For all the benefits it offers, it's worth working around the salt issue.

Well recommended.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books