Opening and heating a can of soup is a quick meal when you're in a hurry. While not every canned soup is a healthy option, some canned soups fit into a healthy diet if you eat them in moderation. The trick is to read the labels carefully, looking for low-fat and low-sodium varieties of soup. Keeping a few cans of soup on hand may help prevent you from turning to high-fat snacks or fast food when you're hungry but don't have much time to eat.
Nutrients
One cup of condensed vegetable soup with pasta that has been diluted with water and heated typically contains 80 calories and 1 g of fat. There are 15 g of carbohydrates; of those, 3 g are dietary fiber. The soup provides 3 g of protein and 45 percent of the vitamin A you need each day. Soups that contain meat, such as chicken or beef, will generally be higher in calories and fat. Many canned soups contain measurable amounts of vitamin C, calcium and iron, and no cholesterol, making them a healthy part of a balanced meal.
Sodium
Healthy adults should not consume more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. If you have problems with your blood pressure or have kidney disease or diabetes, you should keep your sodium intake to under 1,500 mg per day. Canned soups are notorious for containing a lot of sodium, so choose low-sodium or reduced-sodium versions. A cup of regular, condensed vegetable soup holds 480 mg of sodium. Most low-sodium soups, or versions of soups that are marketed as healthy, have considerably less than 500 mg of sodium per serving so they can fit in a low-sodium diet if you are careful.
Canned Food
While canned soups do contain vitamins, they are in lower concentrations than in homemade soups, so they're not a good choice to eat every day. Tomato soup does contain a high amount of lycopene, points out an article in the "Mail Online." Lycopene has known cancer-fighting properties and canned versions of tomatoes contain much more of it than fresh tomatoes. Vegetables that contain vitamin A also tend to increase the amount available when canned, notes the University of Maryland, so the carrots in your soup are rich in beta-carotene. Canned food loses some nutrients during processing, but what remains stays consistent over the shelf life of the product.
Tips
Because of the lower vitamin content, serve canned soup with a fresh vegetable salad and whole-grain bread for optimum nutrition. Homemade soups freeze well, so consider making a large batch and storing it in smaller containers. It will be nearly as fast to heat up as opening a can of soup. Keep in mind that no canned soup will be entirely free of sodium because most foods that go into soup contain some sodium.
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