I absolutely adore soup and it would be my go-to lunch in winter. Soups are a great way of getting in more plant foods - here are my tips for the perfect winter soup:⁠⁠
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✔️To provide a balanced and nourishing meal look for a good distribution of protein, vegetables and good sources of carbohydrates such as legumes, grains and root vegetables. 🥕🍠⁠⠀⁠⁠
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✔️As sources of protein use quinoa, lentils, chickpeas, buckwheat, beans, mushrooms, tofu, dairy meat, and chicken. 🥩⁠⠀⁠⁠
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✔️Have a large proportion of low-carbohydrate vegetables, such as cauliflower, zucchini, asparagus, broccoli, fennel, pumpkin, kale, spinach, etc. 🥦⁠⠀⁠⁠
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✔️To promote satiety, try adding extra fibre to your soup using seeds such as pumpkin, sunflower, chia, hemp, linseed and sesame seeds. 🍲⁠⠀⁠⁠
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✔️Don’t forget your herbs and spices like ginger, pepper, turmeric, celery and fresh herbs for added polyphenols 🌶️⁠⠀⁠⁠
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Soup is a great way to help meet the target of 30 different plant foods across the week. Why 30 plant foods? This is to support the microbes living in our gut which need a diverse range of plant foods to flourish. The more diverse plant foods that we feed our gut microbes, the more diverse they become and the more ‘skills’ they have to…

• Train our immune cells.

• Increase our resilience to infection.

• Strengthen our gut barrier.

• Communicate with our brain.

• Balance our blood sugar, lower blood fats and help prevent against many diseases.

Here’s my favourite soup recipes, and I’ve included some of my favourite supermarket options too for when life gets busy.

1. Italian Country Soup

   On a cold rainy day this is my absolute go-to. This will give you 9 different plants just in one bowl of soup!

2. Roast pumpkin, pear and chickpea soup

The issue with a lot of soup recipes can be that while they might have plenty of veggies they can be quite low on protein and as such not very filling. My trick is to add some legumes like chickpeas or cannellini beans, either blended or left whole. Chickpeas are a terrific source of plant based protein and fibre and are high in manganese, copper and iron. Pumpkin is one of the best known sources of beta-carotene which is a powerful anti-oxidant. Adding pear brings a beautiful sweetness to this dish. It's very simple to put together with the oven doing the bulk of the work.

3. TOMAT0 SOUP TWO WAYS

Tomatoes would be my favourite food - I grew up on Heinz tomato soup, paired with a cheese toasty! I’ve got two favourite tomato soup recipes:

Roasted Tomato and White Bean Soup

Tomato Soup with Melted Bocconcini

4. Greek Red Lentil soup

The lemon and feta make this humble soup so tasty.

5. CHICKEN CANNELLINI SOUP

Most chicken soup recipes require starting with a full chicken and cooking it first for a few hours. This is a much easier recipe, from one of my favourite cookbooks and it’s incredibly tasty.

6. SUPERMARKET SOUPS

I get it! Sometimes it’s already lunch time and you haven’t had time to cook. With supermarket soups I look for a relatively short ingredient list, plenty of veggies and a reasonable amount of protein, lower carbs and as low sodium as possible. My top pics are:

• The Heinz Plant Proteinz range, these contain 15g of plant protein and are high in fibre

• I really like the Yalla fresh soups - Harira is my favourite (9g of protein)

• The La Zuppa pouches are handy and Darikay fresh soups are pretty good too

So, tell me, what’s your favourite soup recipe, and how are you going on your 30 different plant food challenge?

Have you been thinking for a while that you would love to find out more about your gut health or why your weight won’t shift no matter what you do? Or maybe you just want to feel less bloated, have more energy and understand what food you are meant to be eating?

I’m offering a free 15 minute call to work out a nutrition action plan to get you feeling your best. There are no commitments just a friendly chat so we can work out if I’m the right person to help you reach your health goals.

Rachel is a university qualified Clinical Nutritionist based in Balmain.  She is also the busy working mum of two teenagers, so is practical and realistic with her advice . Rachel offers private consultations to improve your family's health and well-being. You can find her on Facebook and Instagram for more healthy tips and tricks.