Which is more nutritious, eating meat or drinking soup? I spent 7,000 yuan to finally figure it out.

On the dining table of many families, soup seems to be a universal dish:

Drink chicken soup when you recover from a serious illness

Drink crucian carp soup to increase milk production

Drink bone soup to supplement calcium

Drink vegetable soup to dispel heat

......

But many people don’t know that the soups we often drink are not as nutritious as we imagine, and may even be somewhat unhealthy.

We bought some common ingredients and invited a cooking expert from Dad to make 5 homely soups with lighter flavors.

The types of soup are as follows:

The soup was then divided into two and sent to the laboratory together to test their nutritional content separately.

Sample fee 122.37 yuan + testing fee 7350 yuan = total 7472.37 yuan

Is soup nutritious? Is it worth drinking? Here we reveal the secrets of soup.

1. How much essence is there in soup? It is said that soup is the essence of the ingredients, while meat is the dregs of soup, which is not nutritious and not worth eating. This time, let's test how much nutrition is there in soup.

Protein/calcium content

Everyone believes that drinking broth mainly replenishes protein and calcium, so we measured the protein and calcium content of several broths.

The protein content is as follows:

The results show that the protein content in the soup residue is much higher than that in the soup itself, whether it is meat or vegetable soup. Even the crucian carp soup, which is recognized as "high in protein" and "can increase milk production", has only 1/13 of the protein content in the crucian carp meat itself.

Some of you may say: Dad, that's not allowed! Soup is easy to digest, so I can drink a lot every time; meat is hard to digest, so I feel full after eating a few pieces!

Let's calculate how much protein a bowl of soup and a mouthful of meat contain:

Let me put it this way, no matter which bowl of these 5 kinds of broth you drink, none of them can provide as much protein as eating a bite of meat.

Now let’s look at the calcium content.

Whenever you have a broken bone, your mother will give you bone soup for half a month, because bone soup can replenish calcium! But from the actual data, the calcium in the soup is far less than that in milk:

The calcium you get from drinking a bowl of pork rib soup is not as much as a mouthful of milk or a few bites of dark vegetables. If you want to drink soup to get the calcium in a box of milk, you probably have to drink 40 or 50 bowls to get enough.

The Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2016 edition) has also long mentioned that the nutritional content of the muscle part of poultry and livestock is higher than that in soup.

This is because most of the protein and calcium in the meat are insoluble. Even after high-temperature stewing, only a very small amount can be dissolved in the soup. In other words, even if you stew for a long time, the soup is not as nutritious as the soup residue.

Iron/Vitamin C Content

Unlike meat broth, the main nutrient in vegetable broth is water-soluble vitamin C. Spinach is said to have the effect of replenishing iron, so we also measured the iron content of the broth.

The test results are as follows:

No vitamin C was detected in either the soup or the vegetables. It seems that after high-temperature cooking, the vitamin C has been completely decomposed.

In addition, no iron was detected in the soup, only a small amount of iron (1.12 mg/100 g) was detected in the soup residue.

Whisper: The iron content of spinach (2.9 mg/100g) is nothing compared to that of pork liver (23.2 mg/100g). If you really want to supplement iron, eating some animal offal every week is more effective than eating spinach in any way!

It seems that vegetable soup not only has little nutritional value in itself, but also causes the loss of nutrients in the vegetables themselves due to long cooking time.

Apart from replenishing more water, it is not necessarily more nutritious than stir-frying.

2. Is soup nourishing? It may be counterproductive. Drinking soup is not as nourishing as imagined, and it may also contain some "not so good" substances.

Fat

When you drink soup, do you like to stew it into a white soup that looks like milk? It looks very nutritious! It can supplement calcium!

But we actually tested and found that the crucian carp soup, which looks the whitest and thickest, actually has the highest fat content.

The protein in the meat is a natural emulsifier that breaks up the fat into tiny droplets. These fat droplets are suspended in the soup, making it look white.

Friends who often cook know that if you want to make a thick fish soup, you need to fry the fish first. This is because the fat content of fish is not high, and it needs a little "external force" to produce more milky white substances.

After the fat in the soup is emulsified, it tastes more fragrant and less greasy. You drink several bowls of milky soup without realizing it, so...

By the way, many friends also believe that the milky white fish soup is rich in protein and drinking more can help produce milk!

The reality is that not only can you not produce milk, but you may also have milk swelling and milk blockage due to too much fat. If you want to produce milk, just drink more water.

Salt

We invited some colleagues to taste the soup, and most of them said that it tasted just right and not too salty.

The salt content of several soups was then tested and converted into the amount of a bowl of soup. It was found that any bowl of soup in the experiment contained at least 1.2g of salt.

The Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents recommends that we:

The recommended daily salt intake for adults aged 18 to 50 and pregnant women should not exceed 6g.

Excessive sodium intake will increase the risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, and will also cause edema and dry skin.

If you have one bowl before and one bowl after a meal, you will have used up 1/3 of the quota. If you have a strong taste, you like to add soy sauce and MSG to soup and eat other dishes, so one meal can exceed the daily sodium intake limit.

We also interviewed a Guangdong friend who often makes soup. It is said that Guangdong people put more water and less salt when making soup?

This is a very good point and worth learning from!

Purine

Poultry and seafood contain a lot of purine, which is soluble in water. The longer it is stewed, the more it dissolves.

In particular, some friends still pursue traditional soup and only drink the soup without eating the meat, which is equivalent to stewing out all the purine in the meat but not the real nutrients.

The purine content of broth, fish soup and seafood soup is greater than 150mg/100g, which are considered super high-purine foods.

Excessive intake of purine can lead to gout, kidney stones, hyperuricemia and other diseases.

If you have high uric acid or gout, it is recommended that you drink less.

From this perspective, soup is not the essence. The idea that "drinking soup is nourishing and healthy" is even more wrong. Drinking soup without eating meat will make the nutritional intake unbalanced.

But the soup is not completely worth drinking.

In the hot summer, drinking some vegetable soup can not only stimulate your appetite but also quickly replenish water.

For people who have just given birth or have undergone surgery, their stomachs are somewhat weak, and eating meat directly will lead to indigestion.

At this time, drinking some light broth/vegetable soup can not only quickly replenish your physical strength, but also improve your appetite.

PS: Drinking soup is just a transitional measure during the period of [no appetite], and it cannot speed up the body's recovery. Supplementing with high-quality protein (such as eggs and milk) in moderation can help the body recover faster~

In fact, we also know that for many people, it is impossible not to drink soup.

It is no longer an ordinary dish. It is a product of the love of the family. After a busy day, when you come home and drink a bowl of soup made by your family, your stomach and heart will be warmed.

If you really love soup, don't worry. You can still drink soup, but you just need to pay attention to the following points:

Do you have a friend who loves to drink soup? Share this article with him/her~

References: [1] GB/Z 21922-2008, Basic terms for food nutrients.

[2] Chinese Nutrition Society. Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2016). People's Medical Publishing House, 2016.

[3] He Zhiqian. Human Nutrition. 3rd edition. Beijing: People's Medical Publishing House, 2008, 289.

[4] Shao Yuxin. Research on calcium and phosphorus nutrition and bone development of broiler chickens[D]. Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2019.

[5] Guo Hongzhuang, Hu Yueming, Wang Hui, Tu Zongcai. Analysis of bone calcium composition of the “four major fish species”[J]. Food and Fermentation Industries, 2020, 46(18): 226-231.

[6] Peng Yuanhuai. Study on the fluorine storage form and free fluorine release mechanism of Antarctic krill shell[D]. Guangdong Ocean University, 2019.

[7] Lai Pufu. Research on a new process for preparing calcium lactate from clam shells[D]. Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, 2009.