Hunger is a terrible thing, especially between meals. Soup however could be the answer to this niggling problem.
There are many benefits to eating soup. They are easy to cook, easy to eat, nutritious and there are so many different kinds that it’s difficult to find at least one that you like. There is however one perhaps not so obvious benefit to soup. It keeps you fuller for longer.
Forgetting that then ingredients used in soups are generally made of high carbohydrate and fibre foods. The truly amazing thing about eating soup is that if you ate exactly the same meal in solid form with a glass of water, for example roast chicken and vegetables it would not fill you up for as long as if you had blended the meal together with the glass of water. A very strange idea yes but the answer lies in the stomach.
Normal meals are easier to digest.
If you eat the ‘solid’ meal with the glass of water separately the water will simply fill in the gaps between the lumps of food in your stomach. Making it easy for your body to drain away the liquid so it can concentrate on digesting the lumps of food in your stomach. Therefore your stomach will become empty again nice and quickly.
If however the water has been combined into the food by making a soup, the water is incorporated in the food. This means that the stomach cannot simply drain away the liquid in order to digest the food. Therefore the body has to work much harder to get the liquid out of your meal thus meaning your stomach stays fuller for longer and meaning that you won’t need to eat again so soon.
A dieting gift to all
For those on a diet not snacking is often the most difficult challenge. Having to battle through the hunger pangs to the next meal is not pleasant. So why not try eating soup for lunch to try to keep those rumbling tummies at bay until dinner time. It could also be a good way to help cram in a couple of extra portions of your recommended 5 a day.
Many soup recipes are vegetable heavy because they provide a lot of flavour and create a silky texture that can really help to make meal times a pleasure. Even if you don’t fancy vegetable soup there’s plenty of meat filled soup recipes out there to take your fancy.
So whether its to help you with a diet or just to stop you getting too hungry too quick, soup could be your lunch time salvation.
