To think that tinned soups are just the skanky bits/byproducts of other things

[1988TBT]

Just thinking…sat here having my tin of minestrone for lunch (which I am quite enjoying)

And yesterday I had Heinz big soup chicken and veg…

I’m not complaining per se as I quite like them but… they honestly just look like the crappy dregs of veg and meat that are fit for nothing apart from disguising in a salty sauce. Definitely byproducts of other things that are sold extra cheap.

I’m sure the tin can and label probably costs more to manufacture than the product!

I often make my own soup but sometimes lack of time/life just doesn’t allow.

It made me think… what other food beauty/products are we being conned by.

That's what soups are - the leftovers and bits that can't be used elsewhere. Especially minestrone, that's literally the odds and sods. But soup generally was created to use up leftovers or make the small amount of meat someone had go further - it was common in prisons, for example, because they could make one piece of meat serve hundreds of people.

My home made soups are usually made from all the skanky veg from the back of the fridge, and left over bits of meat. It's what soup was invented for!

No Heinz do not use leftovers in their soup!

I get that making soup sounds like a hassle. But if we can be posting on here then we prob do have time now and then!

@Newgirls

I get that making soup sounds like a hassle. But if we can be posting on here then we prob do have time now and then!

Yeah sitting on Mumsnet and not being able to stand long enough or chop veg is the same thing

Well, yes - that’s processed food for you.

I used to work at ‘the berries’ each summer in the packing shed. All the best fruit would be sorted by hand and packed nicely for Tesco’s or M&S or whatever. The less nice fruit was frozen, mechanically sorted, bagged up for catering packs. The stuff that thawed and fell out of the machine onto the rack, mixed with bugs / dirt / leaves / whatever, plus the literal scrapings from the floor around the machine? Dumped in a tub and sold for making “real fruit “ yoghurt 😂.

@1forAll74 - see my post for how the bristles got into your soup!

Sure allthings but also plenty of people inc me could, but are too used to buying stuff - and all the packaging that goes with that

Well that's kind of the point of soup. To use up all the bits of leftover and slightly past its best veg.

Likewise cottage or shepherd's pie, it's a bit mad that you can actually buy something like this ready made when its traditionally a dish made of leftover roast meat.

@CounsellorTroi

I buy fresh soup from the chiller cabinet. Tinned soups are frighteningly high in salt - it’s used as a preservative. I never buy soup with meat in either.

No. Canning is the preservative. Salt not required.

I watched a programme once that suggested the opposite. Tinned and frozen food often has the best veg quality in terms of nutrients than even stuff made from fresh veg

Try Baxter’s veggie soups - carrot and coriander, spiced parsnip, carrot and butter bean - totally delicious.

I doubt the factories buy bulk leftovers.

I'm sure there have been programs on the box showing that its just bulk bought veg and meats which are processed and canned. I doubt anyone even touches the produce after it leaves the fields.

@MoreStuffingMatron

Try Baxter’s veggie soups - carrot and coriander, spiced parsnip, carrot and butter bean - totally delicious.

YY to this. Baxter's tomato (and M&S and Waitrose own brand, which I suspect is a similar/the same recipe) is far superior to the Heinz version.

You’ve just inspired me to make minestrone soup for dinner!

I hadn't had tinned soup for years but with the weather getting colder I thought I'd try some.
This stuff from Baxters left me with a raging thirst, and no wonder - 2.3g of salt in one tin!
It tasted of salt, nothing much else.
That's what you can see in a regular-sized teaspoon here. I'd put less than that in a huge pan of chicken stock.
Will not be buying this again.

@Brefugee

so what? we should have food waste? it makes sense for everything to be used up. On the foodbank thread the other day someone was saying "don't buy tinned chopped tomatoes, they're only the ones with the bad bits cut off" and that is EXACTLY why we should be buying them.

Food standards are very high so aside of the high salt, etc, in processed food, there shouldn't be any worry about eating them.

People have lost the knack of being able to tell if food is off or not, or of cutting the bad bits off potatoes and fruit and using the rest. It's a massive scandal, tbh, one of the biggest of our times.

If a factory is making 10,000 tins of chopped tomatoes, do you really think that they are manky toms with the manky bits chopped off? It would not be cost effective. The toms will have been grown for tinning, so will not have to be the perfectly shaped spheres that we buy for salads. The best toms I have ever tasted were grown by my sis in France. The mankiest misshapen looking tomatoes I have seen, but sweet and very tasty.