Why have I written a book about soup?

After all, I’m a gardening writer and also write on camping and fiction.

I am also, however, a keen cook and grower of fruit, vegetables and herbs, with a lifelong interest in good nutrition.

And on top of all that, in recent years I have had an ongoing battle with weight. Certainly I am genetically disposed to weight gain – but the main reason I whack it on is because I eat too much and am very fond of wine!

Every so often I have to pull myself together and go on a diet to get back into some sort of shape. I’ve found that by far the most effective way of doing this is eating soup at least once, twice or even three times a day.
Which is fine with me because I love soup and have always enjoyed making it – creating new recipes as I go. It’s easy, it’s fun to make, its economical and it’s a great way of using up left food and vegetables that are past their first freshness.

Others, too, have found that substituting soup for solid meals leads to a fast but sustainable weight loss.

Why?

Think of this:

If you took the solid matter in a bowl of soup – the meat, the veg, the other ingredients – and put it on a dinner plate, it would look pretty meager. You’d swallow it down in a gulp or two and still feel hungry. This is what happens when we “go on a diet” – we reduce the amount of food we eat, and the type of food we enjoy, so that we don’t take on board so many calories/kilojoules.

Now put that same quantity of food into a bowl of soup. Because the main single ingredient of soup is water, it stretches the overall food content much further yet fills the stomach in the most satisfying way. You feel “full up” immediately and that feeling lasts quite a long time.

This is the secret of a good soup: It fills you up, satisfies your taste buds, gives you all the nutrition you need – yet is light on calories in comparison with a “solid” meal.

We all eat too much today – and anyone who isn’t in that fortunate position is not likely to be reading this blog – or my book. Unless we are in training for some sport, or have a job that requires long hours of hard, physical labor, we ingest far more energy (in the form of calories and kilojoules) than we can use. A large bowl of soup that contains meat, fresh and dried vegetables, pulses, grains, herbs and other edibles will give us as much nutrition as we need in any one meal, bearing in mind we will eat and drink other things during the day. Even a hearty vegetable soup, perhaps with cheese or tofu added, will be full of nutrition.

Of course I’m not advocating we live on soup. But for those wishing to lose weight, a soup diet is the most effective diet there is to balance weight loss with good nutrition – until the desired weight is achieved. And even after that I’d advocate a “soup day” once or twice a week to help you stay slim.

I’ll be posting other articles on this blog about the virtues of soup – not just for slimmers but for oldies and tots and invalids too. Meanwhile, you can buy Slim with Soup at for only $3.99 at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B00B2GX3DC/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link

At least check out the link and see what you think. And you can find more information about the book by clicking on the My Books tab above.