Chicken Soup - Tried and Tasted

Continuing in their mission to bring you the best low calorie foods, the Tried and Tasted Team opted for some low-calorie chicken soups to see if they could live up to their higher calorie rivals.

Chicken Soup is a brilliant comfort food to fill you up in the cold winter months but do the low calorie versions deliver? Our Tried and Tasted Team took a look.

Our tasters rated all the soups out of 5 and they have been ranked in order according to their average score.

Table 1: Low Calorie Chicken Soups Compared

Product	Baxters Favourites Chicken Broth	Heinz Classic Chicken Noodle Soup	Asda Chicken Noodle Soup
Ranking	1	2	3
Appearance	This soup was watery and pale – not off to a great start!	The soup looked the most appealing with plenty of veg and even some hints of chicken.	This soup looked bright and colourful with plenty of noodles, although the yellow colour was off-putting for some tasters.
Smell	The smell wasn’t great either – one taster thought dog food, so perhaps it’s best not to get too near!	The smell suggested the soup might actually have chicken in it – a turn up for the books compared to the lower scoring soups!	This was thought to smell the most like chicken and was quite pleasant.
Taste	It was the taste of this soup that really earned it points and put it in first place. Once we’d got over the appearance and smell, we were greeted with delicious veggy flavours and lots of chicken for everyone!	We were right! We found chicken in this soup and the flavours were good.	Floury and powdery – but if you could get past the texture the taste was fairly good. However there was no chicken in sight!
Filling / Satisfying?	Despite a slightly thin broth, the big chunks of chicken would fill us up.	With a bit of bread this would make a good meal.	Most thought this wouldn’t fill them up.
Texture / Consistency	A bit on the thin side but filled out nicely with the veg.	The only thing to let this soup down was its texture. One taster said it ‘coated the tongue like glue.’ We needed plenty of water to wash this soup down!	‘Powdery’ and ‘clagging’ were the most used words!
Our Conclusion	Baxters surpassed all the other chicken soups on taste resulting in a win! Baxters could improve the appearance and smell of their soup, but otherwise a delicious winter warmer.	A plucky effort! Good on flavour but only if you can cope with the texture. A safe second place.	Asda’s soup made it to third place – the taste was good but the texture put us off and although the cheapest, this soup is the highest in calories! You could definitely find better.
Price	£0.87	£0.82	£0.52
Calorie Content per can	126	124	148

Table 2: More Low Calorie Chicken Soups Compared

Product	Sainsbury’s Chicken Noodle Soup	Morrison’s Chicken Noodle Soup	Weight Watchers from Heinz Chicken Noodle Soup
Ranking	4	4	6
Appearance	This soup looked thick and herby.	‘Gloopy,’ ‘slimey’ and ‘like noodles floating in dishwater’ – we didn’t feel very peckish after that!	Thin and pale with a few old veg and not much else floating in it – the Taste Team were disappointed that they couldn’t find any chicken.
Smell	Slightly spicy – after much deliberation the tasters thought it might be ginger.	This soup didn’t really smell of anything – we weren’t impressed.	This soup didn’t smell of chicken – mostly dominated by the smell of potato.
Taste	This soup definitely let us down in the taste test. It left a strange taste in the mouth that was hard to get rid of. Most thought that Sainsbury’s was attempting a Chinese-style soup but unfortunately failing miserably.	The tasters couldn’t stomach this chicken soup – another one trying to emulate Chinese flavours but falling flat. A strange mixture of spice and sweetcorn – still no chicken!	When going to taste, one taster made a breakthrough – she found a very small piece of chicken! Once that had gone there was no chicken for anyone else! After all the excitement of the chicken, the tasters were disappointed that there was, in fact, no taste whatsoever!
Filling / Satisfying?	It would probably fill you up but eating would not be a pleasurable experience.	Most tasters thought that they wouldn’t manage a whole tin without a colossal effort – the soup left a coating in the mouth that’s sure to be around a good while after you’ve finished the can!	One taster thought that he was hungrier after eating this soup! We can’t imagine it would fill you up.
Texture / Consistency	Thick and Slimy!	The texture is what let this soup down the most. One taster commented ‘it takes all of the moisture out of your mouth!’ Thick and gummy with an unpleasant residue!	Thin and watery with no chicken and very little veg to bulk it out.
Our Conclusion	Better luck next time Sainsburys. A good start with smell and appearance but the taste and texture really let the soup down leaving it perching in fourth place.	No one was impressed by Morrison’s offering which only just managed a joint fourth place ranking. This soup is second highest in calories and not a pleasant experience – the Taste Team did not enjoy	Weight Watchers were lowest in the pecking order this time. The soup was far too thin with no flavour.
Price	£0.52	£0.52	£0.66
Calorie Content per can	106	146	50*

Our chicken ‘Soup of the Day’ was Baxters Favourites Chicken Broth. Plenty of chicken and veg and a good taste meant our Tried and Tasted Team loved it. Although it’s a bit pricey, it’s fairly easy on the calories so a good choice for a winter meal.

The Tried and Tasted Team have also tried some other soup flavours:

• Vegetable Soup
• Tomato Soup
• Minestrone Soup
• Carrot Soup

*Weight Watchers cans of soup are 295g compared to all other brands which are 400g or 415g.