Soup!

I love soup.  Before the CHF diagnosis,  I loved  a can of soup for lunch.  Notice that I said a can of soup.  The fact that they say that a can contains two servings is almost insulting.  Face it,  if you love soup,  a can is only one serving.  Most soups are way beyond too much sodium for those of us who are trying to stay below 1200-1500 mg of sodium a day.   I've been making my own soups, which I will post later and they have been pretty good.  But for lunch, sometimes you just want the convenience of a can of soup. 

Publix to the Rescue once again!   In their organic section, they have a variety of no salt added soups from Health Valley.   They also have some 40% less sodium soups, but even those have too much for me.  But the no salt added ones are great.

I have tried the Vegetable, Minestrone, Tomato, Potato Leek, and Chicken Noodle.  All were good but I can see if you aren't used to eating no salt, they would be bland.  I still miss that salty taste at times, but it's getting easier.  Anyway, back to the soups.  They were all good and I enjoyed having soup again. They range in 100-140 mg of sodium a can which is good.   Of course they list 2 servings a can, but each serving is a reasonable 50 -70 mg per serving.

I'm not sure if they are available everywhere, but you can use the store locator on their website to see if a store near you offers them.  I tried my sister's zip code in Pennsylvania as she also has CHF and found a Giant and a Wegman's store near her that carry the Health Valley soups.  They also sell them online at the Health Valley website but they are very pricey there due to shipping.   I have found them on Amazon also and if you have Prime,  you can have them shipped free and that makes them a little more reasonable.

Another thing to keep an eye out for is Campbell's ready to serve low sodium soup.  My wonderful eagle eye husband found this in the regular soup section at Publix.  They also have a chicken broth and cream of mushroom variety.   The Chicken Noodle has 140 mg sodium per serving and for a change,  one serving is one container.  This was also good if you are used to no salt in your food.  I added a little of Benson's Table Tasty one time and some Mrs Dash another time and both made it taste even better.    The Cream of Mushroom has just 45 mg sodium for the whole can.  Hopefully these will start showing up in every store soon along with the other Campbell's products.