| Product: |
Tesco Cream of Mushroom Soup |
| Date: |
23/02/08 (271 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Low fat, low sugar, taste, price
Disadvantages: High salt content
~ Introduction ~
I go to Tesco Metro for my daily lunch shopping. I usually buy fruit and vegetables with some fish or seafood though I try to have at least one completely meat free lunch once a week. When looking for a light meal that's healthy, vegetarian and also filling, soups are a great option. The fresh Tesco soup range has 7 options in total, with 3 chicken, 1 with cheese and 3 vegetable soups which make 4 varieties suitable for vegetarians. (According to the original term of 'vegeratian' where it is defined as "with or without eggs or dairy products").
~ The packaging ~
The 600g soup pots are very handy and economical. Half of the pot (300g) makes one serving for lunch and I either keep the rest for dinner to go with my usual salad or leave it till next day.
~ The taste ~
The texture is thick is creamy though not overly starchy or glutinous as canned cream soups. I would say its thickness is just right for a cream soup. It does have a fair amount of mushroom in it mainly in pureed or finely diced form. Cream soups - as their name suggest - do not have chunky vegetable or other ingredients so there's no surprises here. What surpised me is that this soup actually tastes better than the more expensive ones. It doesn't have a sharp, salty edge but rather a creamier and sweeter taste.
~ The nutrition ~
I've compared the soup with a same amount of New Covent Garden Wild Mushroom Soup to see how it fares for the better or for the worse and I was pleasantly surprised.
Tesco Cream of Mushroom Soup 300g (1 serving) has recommended daily amounts of:
- very low calories (5%)
- very low fat (4%)
- low saturated fat (7%)
- low sugar (4%)
- high salt content (27%)
New Covent Garden Wild Mushroom Soup 300g (1 serving) has recommended daily amounts of:
- low calories (8%)
- low fat (8%)
- high saturated fat (20%)
- very low sugar (2%)
- very high salt content (38%)
A quick glance at these figures reveals that New Covent Garden soup has twice as much calories and fat in it with a high saturated fat content. There's also half as less sugar in it as in Tesco Cream of Mushroom soup. This doesn't mean that there's more white sugar in Tesco's soup, but that it comes from the cream and starch that makes it a cream soup unlike the Covent Garden one, a stock based soup.
The most shocking figures are the salt content. To start with, I wasn't happy at all to find that I'm consuming 27% of my daily recommended salt intake in one modest bowl of Cream of Mushroom soup (the soup doesn't taste salty of all so it may well be other salts in it as well). Then I saw that the same amount of New Covent Garden wild mushroom soup had a staggering 38% of the recommended daily salt intake. I will definitely not be touching that stuff again!
~ Conclusion ~
I find that Tesco Cream of Mushroom Soup is one of the less notoriously offending, nutritionally balanced and most value for money soups and one of tastiest of the fresh soup range available. Of the three mushroom soups available from the chiller this soup had the lowest salt content amongst its counterparts Tesco Finest Madeira Mushroom soup and New Covent Garden Wild Mushroom soup.
Another surprising fact was that this creamy soup contains almost three times the amount of mushrooms (28%) compared to the New Covent Garden Wild Mushroom soup's pathetic 10%.
It does however lose one star for having a high salt content as its 1/4 daily salt content makes it unsuitable for frequent consumption.
~ Price ~
Tesco Cream of Mushroom Soup 94p / 600g
Thanks for reading.
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Summary: A creamy mushroom soup that's nutritionally balanced and great value for money.
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