People today live fast-paced lives, and some find making soup at home to be time-consuming and laborious. As a result, various flavored packaged soup mixes have emerged in supermarkets, which can be prepared simply by adding boiling water at home. However, nutritionist Gan Ling warns that the vast majority of these convenient soup mixes are not highly nutritious and contain excessive salt, so they should be consumed in moderation.
In the seasoning section of several major supermarkets, Gan Ling discovered that there is a wide variety of convenient soup mixes available on the market, but the vast majority only list their ingredients on the packaging without a nutritional information panel. Among the 20-30 brands of convenient soup mixes at Carrefour, only 2 are labeled with nutritional information.
"Convenient soup mixes, especially powdered ones, are like the seasonings in instant noodles. The vast majority have low nutritional value but contain excessive calories and salt," Gan Ling said. Among the few brands that list nutritional information on their packaging, a single 35-gram packet of soup mix contains 86% of the daily recommended salt intake suggested by the Chinese Nutrition Society, while the protein content is only 3 grams.
Excessive calories can easily lead to weight gain and high blood lipids, and a high salt intake can also easily lead to high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, while convenient soup mixes can be used occasionally for convenience, long-term consumption is not beneficial to health.