Do people REALLY only eat half a carton of fresh soup?

[sprigatito]

I’m struggling to get my head around this! I’ve seen on MN several times lately that people eat half of a carton for a meal, and I know the calories are given that way on the packaging, so officially it’s a serving…but I’ve never met anyone in real life who doesn’t eat the whole carton! I’ve lost 4.5 stone this year and I eat soup most evenings for dinner. I don’t overeat generally. My soups are mostly homemade, but I do use fresh supermarket ones sometimes, and half a carton really would be a miserable little puddle in the bottom of the bowl! Is it really, honestly normal? And…why?

YABU: half a carton is ample. You’ve lost sight of what a normal bowl of soup looks like
YANBU: nobody actually does that. It’s soup, not golden syrup with extra chunks of pork fat.

I don’t think most people would have just soup for a meal so half a carton with a sandwich or a main course would be fine. If I just had soup I would eat more than half as it’s not very filling on its only and often light on calories. I’d probably be hungry soon after even if I the whole carton. The one I had recently was only about 200 calories for the whole carton so it’s not enough.

I would eat half but I really struggle with portion sizes. I feel full really easily. Its why I only eat half a sandwich at a time, I feel really bloated. Its not "competitive undereating" as MNers would claim but that my stomach really cant take more than that without causing pain.

I have recovered from an ED in recent years and I am sure it is to do with that. I will eat (say) half the soup for lunch and the rest for dinner. Or half a sandwich for lunch then the other half mid afternoon. I am a healthy weight, normalBMI and not at all "teeny tiny", I just cant fit much in so I have to do little and often rather than three normal sized meals a day.

Also I do find liquids fill me quicker than other foods as PP have said.

I have this one, mostly because I wanted something fairly small. It makes about 3 portions.

https://amzn.eu/d/0DmIo8U

🥦 and Stilton is my go to, it's always so good.

I prefer the Cully & Sully ones and I do find half a pot is not quite enough and a full one too much, but on checking they are 400g.

Not healthy, what does this mean?

We share a pot too, but always with nice bread and butter and a half actually fills our soup bowls, so it doesn't look miserly. Can't imagine having the whole carton at once. If it was the smaller tin version I would probably have the whole can but less bread with it.

(I'm getting flashbacks to primary school where through the winter, they would randomly give us a bowl of vague soup like vegetable then a main that always seemed to have gone cold on the plate, and no pudding, just a biscuit. I was not a fan and still recall the terrible disappointment of finding it was a soup lunch meaning no custard again)

I also can't imagine having a carton of soup for dinner, seems odd to me. Wouldn't you be hungry again at (or before) bedtime?

😂 My mum thinks half a carton is more than sufficient. I beg to differ!

Volume-wise 230g is a sensible serving but the problem is that there's so little actual food content in even fresh soups from a supermarket. I've given up on fresh supermarket soups or I expect to supplement them with something else too.

Take Yorkshire Provender Fresh Roast Chicken Soup. 560g tub so a serving is 230g. Along with 2 slices of bread (I have used the facts from Bertinet Bakery Malted Wheat Sourdough Bread) your meal would contain:
Energy 321 kcal
Fat 6.6g
Carbohydrate 48.0g
Fibre 6.0g

And a lot of that nutrition is from the bread! What comes from the soup is tiny. Looking at the ingredients the meat content is literally listed as 2.5%. ie less than 6g in a 230g serving. Probably about a quarter of a mouthful of chicken

Compare that to what you'd get from a supermarket Roast Chicken & salad sandwich on malted bread:

Energy 331kcal
Fat 5.2g
Carbohydrate 43.9g
Fibre 4.8g
Protein 24.8g

You need protien in your meals to feel satisfied and supermarket soups contain tiny amounts.

This is a 230 serving of my home-made chicken and vegetable soup where each serving contains about 60g of chicken - 10 times more than a supermarket soup. I find this totally satisfying for a lunch with a couple of bits of bread:

The problem with that is choosing the wrong soup though, I see M+S now do a smoked fish chowder, half a tub is nearly 9g of protien

When I was buying shop bought soups, this is what I looked for, very high protein content

Also if you make your own and use bone broth and have a lot of rice/barley/potatoes in it, its bordering on a stew which is very substantial

Actually that Yorkshire Provender also contains around 8g per half a tub of protein

bread also has protein in it and you might have a cheese sandwich with it increasing that more

Your body cannot process more than a certain amount of protein in one go anyway, my health team said to try to keep between 15g - 20g of protein in one meal, with snacks in between, but thats an average, people get a bit OTT about this.

@soupyspoon but even 9g isn't very much. I'm getting ongoing "wellbeing and lifestyle" guidance from my GP to help me learn new food expectations and have been instructed to try to ensure that at least 2 of my 3 meals a day should contain at least 20g protien (25g even better if possible) which you'd get from about 100g of meat (obviously non-meat sources are also available but they are usually around 10% protien compared to meat's 25% so you need more)

Sorry I realise I had a copy and paste fail in my post of 9:21 and missed out the protien - the soup&bread nutrition should be
Energy 321kcal
Fat 6.6g
Carb 48.0g
Fibre 6.0g
Protien 15.1g

As you say, about 8g of protein is from the soup but that's not sufficient according to the advice I have been given.

For lunch I’d have the full carton and bread or a sandwich. It’s not much more than a snack. I’d be hungry otherwise.

Portion sizes are often bonkers. Three quarters of a carton is right for me.

I could only eat half a carton of soup (are we talking like one of those Covent Garden soups?) but I would have one or 2 thick slices of sourdough bread and butter with it.

Half a carton and two slices of toast is enough for lunch.

I’d have a whole bowl if not having anything alongside (bread etc). Probably half otherwise.
Why are you fussed what other people do though? It only really matters in the context of what you eat overall, not just for one meal. The people having half a carton of soup for lunch might have had a 1500 calorie fry up for breakfast 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Half for me but I eat six small meals a day for my silent reflux.

Half, with some bread. Have you seen how much salt is in them?! Even besides the calories, that's enough not to eat the full carton. I only eat soup at lunch though, it doesn't feel like dinner food and if get bored reading a whole carton.

I've always had half but I'd have it with bread and probably some cheese on the side

The OP doesn’t have bread though.

But you're not having the soup on its own!

15g of protein for a meal is perfectly adequate, people arent going to become ill if they have 15g for lunch but then 25g for dinner, it doesnt have to be anal like that, for the vast majority of us around 60-80g of protein a day is absolutely fine, my own health team have been guiding me with this because I also need to focus on protien. I eat nuts, cheese, high protein grains and pulses to get that in over the day

This obsession with what is in one ingredient and one meal is really unhealthy and leading to lower levels of fibre intake.

I’m generally quite greedy and the scales show it 😅 but I only have 300ml of soup, bread as well!

I would have a half carton of soup but usually a whole tin - somehow the cartons seem more filling. I make a lot of homemade soup too and I'll sometimes get through two bowls of that!

This! The NCG leek and potato is very salty. I do like it, but I can only eat half a carton. If I make it myself I might eat 3 bowls in a row though!