Campbell’s is like the Microsoft of the soup world. The company dominates the soup business, but it’s products…well…taste like crap.
Their soups are at best bland and mushy. Some contain so much salt that they’re the human equivalent of a salt lick. For example, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup provides a whopping 890 mg of sodium per serving, and 2,225 grams of sodium for a standard 10.75-ounce can.
Campbell’s now owns Swanson, the maker of various chicken broths and stocks. Until recently, Swanson spiked its tasteless products with monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer. But MSG is well documented as a cause of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
I’m not joking. Every Chinese restaurant used to boost the flavor of its meals by adding MSG. But a fair number of customers complained of neck and muscle aches afterwards, the result of MSG. So now, a lot of Chinese restaurants don’t use MSG anymore.
But I digress.
Swanson recently introduced organic chicken, beef, and vegetable broths. Sounds like a great idea, right?
Well, on the company’s web site, the Swanson folks fess up to the fact that their broths contain 550 mg of sodium for each one-cup serving. A typical bowl of soup would contain about two cups, so that would add up to 1,100 mg of sodium. And maybe one blood-pressure cuff.
But no where on the Swanson website is a full listing of the products’ other ingredients. Ditto for the Campbell website. This is more than just peculiar, because even such junk-food hustlers as McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks list all of the ingredients in all of their products on their websites. (For example, a venti-size Starbucks banana coconut frappuccino with whipped cream provides 730 calories, including a quarter-pound of sugars.)
So that left me wondering what Swanson and Campbell might be hiding.
So I clicked to contact customer service and wrote a brief email asking for a complete list of ingredients for the Swanson Organic Chicken Broth. Sounds simple enough, right?
A few days later, campbellsoup@casupport.com responded:
“All of our products have nutritional labels that include the calorie, sodium, fat, cholesterol and carbohydrate content for a single serving. However, it is important to note that product recipes change frequently and ingredients are periodically added or replaced. Therefore, we suggest that you check each package for the most current nutritional information...
“I hope I've been able to answer your question. Please contact the Consumer Response Center or visit Campbell's website if you have additional questions.”
So I wrote back and said that they had NOT answered my question. And I also wondered, adding a list of full ingredients to the website can’t be all that difficult, could it? After all, it’s got to be easier to update a web page compared with…say, reformulating the ingredients in an industrial-size soup manufacturing facility.
Finally I went to both my local supermarket and Whole Foods, but did not find Swanson’s organic broths on the shelf. So their ingredients remain a mystery to me.
And after all this, I’m left wondering: Why couldn’t Campbell’s just be more up front about their ingredients and list them on the company’s website. Unless they really want to hide what’s in them.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
‘Tis the Season: Sugar ‘n Stress
It’s baaccccckkkkkkk…
That time of year, that is.
From Halloween through New Year’s Eve, all too many of us find excuses to be gluttons, from nibbling on leftover Halloween candies to all-out binging. I call it, ominously, the “SS” time — for sugar and stress.
There’s no denying that we expose ourselves to way too many holiday stresses, not the least of which are family, traffic, and shopping at the mall. When we’re stressed, our eating habits slide almost immediately. We delay eating or skip meals entirely. Then, when we’re crashing, we overeat, usually on junk foods.
And that’s a perfect prescription for making stress even worse.
Our brain’s biochemistry depends on what we eat. Or don’t eat. Neurotransmitters are built upon nutrients, particularly amino acids (protein building blocks) and B-complex vitamins. Even our genes depend on nutrients to work properly.
When our blood sugar falls and we crash, ancient parts of our brain light up. We become aggressive, irritable, impatient. Eating a sugary or starchy food solves the problem quickly, but starts a new up-and-down blood sugar cycle.
So, what can you eat to stress proof yourself?
A little bit of quality protein, such as fish or chicken, stabilizes blood sugar. So do high-fiber veggies, which include almost anything except potato.
Protein provides the amino acids you need to make serotonin and GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which are calming neurotransmitters. They also provide the amino acids to make dopamine and adrenaline, two energizing neurotransmitters. Sugar and starches don’t provide any of this, so the more junk food you eat, the more you starve your brain.
We were all taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So begin the day with a little protein, and you’ll be more even tempered much of the day. An egg will do the job. So will a bowl of steel-cut (not instant!) oatmeal. Add some high-fiber fruit, such as an apple or some berries. Then be sure to include a little protein at lunch and dinner too.
If you’re taking prescription antidepressants or anxiolytics, better eating habits will help your meds do a better job.
To convert those amino acids to neurotransmitters, your brain needs the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C.
The Bs have been known as anti-stress vitamins since the 1940s. They are nature’s mood lifters and also take the edge off stress-induced anxiety. The B vitamins also play roles in breaking down food for energy, important if the season’s pressures and obligations tend to wear you down.
If you manage your stress and eating habits now, you just might not need to make a resolution about weight loss come January 1. That alone could put you in a better mood.
Copyright 2009 Jack Challem, www.nutritionreporter.com
That time of year, that is.
From Halloween through New Year’s Eve, all too many of us find excuses to be gluttons, from nibbling on leftover Halloween candies to all-out binging. I call it, ominously, the “SS” time — for sugar and stress.
There’s no denying that we expose ourselves to way too many holiday stresses, not the least of which are family, traffic, and shopping at the mall. When we’re stressed, our eating habits slide almost immediately. We delay eating or skip meals entirely. Then, when we’re crashing, we overeat, usually on junk foods.
And that’s a perfect prescription for making stress even worse.
Our brain’s biochemistry depends on what we eat. Or don’t eat. Neurotransmitters are built upon nutrients, particularly amino acids (protein building blocks) and B-complex vitamins. Even our genes depend on nutrients to work properly.
When our blood sugar falls and we crash, ancient parts of our brain light up. We become aggressive, irritable, impatient. Eating a sugary or starchy food solves the problem quickly, but starts a new up-and-down blood sugar cycle.
So, what can you eat to stress proof yourself?
A little bit of quality protein, such as fish or chicken, stabilizes blood sugar. So do high-fiber veggies, which include almost anything except potato.
Protein provides the amino acids you need to make serotonin and GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which are calming neurotransmitters. They also provide the amino acids to make dopamine and adrenaline, two energizing neurotransmitters. Sugar and starches don’t provide any of this, so the more junk food you eat, the more you starve your brain.
We were all taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So begin the day with a little protein, and you’ll be more even tempered much of the day. An egg will do the job. So will a bowl of steel-cut (not instant!) oatmeal. Add some high-fiber fruit, such as an apple or some berries. Then be sure to include a little protein at lunch and dinner too.
If you’re taking prescription antidepressants or anxiolytics, better eating habits will help your meds do a better job.
To convert those amino acids to neurotransmitters, your brain needs the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C.
The Bs have been known as anti-stress vitamins since the 1940s. They are nature’s mood lifters and also take the edge off stress-induced anxiety. The B vitamins also play roles in breaking down food for energy, important if the season’s pressures and obligations tend to wear you down.
If you manage your stress and eating habits now, you just might not need to make a resolution about weight loss come January 1. That alone could put you in a better mood.
Copyright 2009 Jack Challem, www.nutritionreporter.com
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