Slim vitamin bombs
In ‘liquid food’, such as soup and smoothies, you can pack a lot of healthy substances, while it often contains few calories. But there is one but: drinking too much food is not good.
Soup can serve very well as a lean meal. You can easily make a meal soup from the familiar tomato soup with some meatballs, finely chopped vegetables and grated parmesan cheese. Gratinated onion soup or a tasty full vegetable soup can also serve as a complete meal. Just like the French bouillabaisse with large pieces of fish or the Italian minestrone, which has as many variants as there are chefs.
Not only in Europe do we know the tastiest meal soups. Harira is eaten in the Maghreb (Northwest Africa), Vietnam is the land of pho soup and Thailand is known for its tom yam. Also China, with its versatile gastronomy, serves a whole range of thin and thick rich soups with surprising ingredients and Japan also has a culinary tradition dedicated to the soup.
Healthy and slim
Soup owes its popularity to its taste, ease of preparation and natural ingredients. The fact that she doesn’t appear on the table more often is mainly due to our lack of imagination. But the possibilities for variation are endless. Soup helps us eat vegetables and thus get the recommended portion of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and dietary fiber. You can make a soup from vegetables that children don’t like.
Another advantage is that most soups are low in fat, cholesterol and calories. Good for the weight, at least if you pay attention to ingredients such as cheese, cream and meat. And soup satisfies hunger excellently: when eaten, the stomach expands, causing a feeling of satiety and receptors in the gut send a signal to the brain to stop eating.
Fine fibers
This effect is stronger if the soup has not been strained or pureed and therefore contains pieces. The less the vegetables are processed, the more the dietary fiber is preserved. These fibers provide a feeling of fullness and also have a beneficial effect on the cholesterol level in the blood.
While cooking vegetable soup, some vitamins are lost, such as vitamin C, but other healthy substances, such as beta-carotene (carrots) and lycopene (tomatoes), are better absorbed into the body from soup.
A large-scale French study titled Suvimax found that people who regularly eat soup tend to consume fewer calories during the day, have a lower body mass index and lower cholesterol levels.
Don’t forget to chew
No matter how healthy and lean soup is, it is also important to take enough food that you have to chew well. There is a trend towards softer foods: cornflakes, fish fingers, breakfast drinks and delicious fruit smoothies mean that our jaws have little to do.
But you have to chew. After all, digestion starts in the mouth with the grinding of food, where it is mixed with saliva. This releases enzymes that start digestion. The mouth analyzes the food and sends the necessary information about it to the brain, which in turn initiates digestion.
If we don’t chew or chew too little, the brain doesn’t have time to produce the satiety hormone, so we often eat more than we need. Chewing appears to have a satiating effect. The better we chew, the less chance of being overweight.
hunger hormone
Chinese research also showed that people who chew each bite 40 times have less ghrelin (the ‘hunger hormone’) in their blood than people who chew only 15 times. From this, the researchers concluded that chewing well and eating slowly is an effective method of combating obesity.
Dentists also emphasize the importance of chewing. They warn that slackening of the chewing muscles weakens the jaws. This makes the teeth vulnerable. In addition, soft food sticks more easily to the tooth enamel and thus increases the risk of tartar and cavities. For good oral health, dentists recommend regularly eating something to sink your teeth into, such as a carrot or an apple.
Good weight loss aids
All of this doesn’t mean you should ditch all the delicious soups and smoothies right now. But don’t overdo it: smoothie or soup diets, for example, are not a good idea. They are difficult to maintain, too one-sided and do not help to permanently change eating habits.
If you work on the diet, you can – in addition to a balanced diet – take in very few calories every week for one or two days: no more than 400 or 500 kcal per day. That’s called intermittent fasting, which is all the rage in the United States right now.
Soup is a godsend on these low-calorie days, but should of course not contain too many calories. A regular vegetable soup (without greasy marrow bones and meatballs) is fine for such days. And think about pumpkin soup. Pumpkin is packed with vitamins and minerals and contains a lot of fiber that makes you feel full.
Sources):
- Plus Magazine
