Campbell's "Healthy Request" Tomato Soup - Huh?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Dear Campbell’s Soup Company,

I must admit…the naming of your “Healthy Request” line really makes me wonder, based on what I saw today in the store. What am I referring to? Well…

One may purchase a 10 3/4 oz. can of the traditional, stoic Campbell’s Tomato Soup for $0.49 at my local store - or, one can instead choose to purchase a 10 3/4 oz. can of your “Healthy Request” Tomato Soup for $0.83.

Wow…quite a price difference. Your “Healthy Request” version must be something special! But wait - uh oh, Federal Law mandates you list what is contained within your can. Very well, I will read the label with 'bated breath, to find out how much healthier I will be with my extra 34 cents.


(per can)     Normal Tomato Soup    "Healthy Request" Tomato

Calories              200                    225
Fat Calories            0                     37.5
Total Fat               0g                     4.5g
Sat. Fat                0g                    1.25g
Polyunsat. Fat          0g                    1.25g
Cholesterol             0mg                      0mg
Carbs                  47g                      44g
Protein                 5g                     2.5g
Vitamin A              25%                      20%
Vitamin C              25%                      25%
Calcium                 5%                       0%
Potassium               0%                      17%
Iron                   10%                       5%
Sodium                 75%                      47%

So…let me see if I get this straight. “Healthy Request” Tomato Soup has more calories, more fat (yet advertises in bold lettering “98% Fat Free!”), less protein, less Vitamin A, less iron, and less calcium.

Ah…but here we see how “Healthy” it is. It has less sodium, and more potassium. Possibly because they are substituting potassium chloride for sodium chloride to give it a salty flavor.

And that’s it. Why they couldn’t take the ordinary Tomato Soup and do the same potassium-sodium switcheroo, I will never know. That’s the nearly doubling in price. So Gus at the Tomato Soup Zaibatsu can waddle over to the “Salt-O-Matic” every few batches, and switch from "Lot’s O Salt setting to “Sorta Less Salt”.

Thus, it does not appear to me like “Healthy Request” is really that healthy after all.

Sincerely,
Una

PS - I am not a crackpot.

2

Wow, that’s really interesting. Remind me to stay away from the “Healthy Request”.

Hi, Una! :slight_smile:

3

Nice inquest on the candaver, Anthracite.

Another marketing ploy that irritates me is when sweet snack food manufacturers plaster their labels with “Fat Free!”. Ya check further and of course it’s loaded with sugar, which generally gets put on the body as, ummm, fat. Grrrr.

4

Ah crap. The title of this thread was intended to be Campbell’s “Healthy Request” Tomato Soup - Huh?. I guess vBulletin does not allow “” in the thread title. Can a Mod who has time and reads this please change the title to Campbell’s Healthy Request Tomato Soup - Huh??

5

No, you can have quotation marks. You just can’t preview. (Or is it you have to preview? ::shrugs::slight_smile: Anyway, someone who knows better will clarify I’m sure. (Cue mods! :slight_smile: )

6

And this is the reason why I typically scoff at 99% of new products. Rarely is there a significant difference in any quality except price. Rebranding and repackaging is usually just a febrile attempt to further empty your wallet. You know those advertisments that tout Progresso soup as being superior to Campbell’s? Try to remember that Campbell’s owns Progresso as well and it’s all just a marketing ploy.

7

<insert typical “damn smilie” complaint here>

8

Zenster, I didn’t know that Campbell’s owned Progresso. I usually keep a few cans of their lentil soup on hand for the times I’m too tired to make it from scratch. I thought they wwere an independent, smaller company. Bummer. Because I really am disgusted with the ridiculously inflated prices charged for soup. The whole damn point of soup is that it’s a cheap way to stretch whatever leftovers you have on hand. You can be damn sure that Campbell’s is using the bits and pieces of the food trade to make theirs.

Back to scratch and the freezer fer me.

9

Zenster,

Just to tidy the thread…Campbell’s doesn’t own Progresso; however, it does own Prego. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.

10

Gotcha covered.

11

Anthracite mutters darkly:

Hey, it is 98% fat free. The other 2% is pure fat, of course…

This being MPSIMS and not the Pit, I won’t suggest where that 2% of fat winds up in people who are impressed by those labels…

12

This thread reminds me of a friendly argument I’ve been having with my parents. Sometimes they come to stay with me for a while. When they do, I have to stock special breakfast cereal for them, because “We don’t eat sugared cereals.”

As if I didn’t know that already. So I keep Cheerios in the house. Something like 4 grams of sugar unless you get the honey nut cheerios which is more like 10 or 11 grams of sugar. (Sorry, I’m not at home so I can’t go check the box for accurate sugar-content report.)

Then I’m at the store one day and decide to check out the cereal they eat, which is one of those “low fat, super healthy, you’ll live to be 112 if you eat this cereal.” Ready?

14 grams of sugar in the “heathy” cereal. Freaking Froot Loops had LESS sugar than Heathy Start. Once I started encouraging my folks to read the little print on the box, they realized that most of the so-labeled healthy cereals are worse than Honey Nut Cheerios.

Word.

13

And you know what the worst part is? The stuff sucks. It’s horrible. The taste is putrid. Yucky. Foul.

Feh. I’ll stick to just the regular plain ol’ Campbells line…

or homemade. ::walks away muttering “gotta get a chest freezer”::

14

… icing sugar.

Home made soups are the way forward. I had carrot and parsnip soup today. It was absolutely delicious, and really cheap.

15

Gee, you’d think the regular tomato soup would be blaring “100% FAT FREE!”

Reminds me of a program where Sammy Hagar was being interviewed about his tequila. He stated it was all natural, with no additives or preservatives. The host replied “OH! So it’s GOOD for you!” Heh heh.

16

What really yanks my chain is how these “health” issues morph into a cheaper, oftentimes inferior product, all at a significant price increase. Only in America, I guess.

“Light” Beer (Nobody in marketing would ever call it “Diet” beer, which is what it is) is made largely by the addition of filtered water. I’m thinking I can do that at home, but that’s just me. Is it half the price of non-watered down beer? You get one guess.

And on the horizon, if not there already at a store near you, is genetically altered foodstuffs, ala sugary tasting food with no calories, and “fake” fat. Now, some of us buy food on the assumption that you can actually live on the stuff, you know, like “subsist”?? Oh Well.

17

I try to eat as “fat-free” as I can, and what I have noticed is that when manufacturers take the fat out, they almost ALWAYS add sugar. Since I normally eat very little sugar, this bothers me. The explanation I have heard is that the fat flavors the “food,” and so when they “remove” the fat they have to add sugar for flavor.

FTR, most of the Campbells “Healthy Request” soups ARE, in fact, much lower in fat than their counterparts. Regular tomato soup, being lower in fat NATURALLY than the rest, is somewhat of an anomaly. And when used in cooking, the rest aren’t all that bad. But the thing is…

Choose your “poison.”

The only solution, of course, is to cook your own food…at least that way, you know exactly what went into it. But in today’s world, where people are trying to work AND spend time with their family AND get some sleep AND do a little housework at night so they don’t have to spend their whole weekend cleaning the house…it is hard to spend the time it takes to cook your own meals totally from scratch.

It would be nice if manufacturers could work a little harder to find low fat, low sugar, tasty foods than to spend time trying to find ways to market the stuff they are offering now.

And Tedster, I used to date a bartender who would suggest, when someone ordered a “light” beer, that they should have a regular beer, and he would throw a couple of ice cubes in the glass. He said that more often than not, people would just stare at him with a blank look on their face and say "no thanks, I will just have a “___Light.”

Scotti

18

Anthracite - You should really send this letter to Campbells. You can email them by clicking questions at:

Their reply should be interesting. I emailed them once asking why they put MSG in some of their Chunky brand soups. They basically told me that if I didn’t like it to try their Healthy Request line. lol