By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: April 10, 2013
Soup is trying to trick us all.
In all likelihood, soup has graced your dinner table for years. The friendly Campbell’s soup cans line our pantry shelves and lend their contents to casseroles and lunches. But despite reaching a sort of idolitry through the love of Andy Warhol, I am sorry to report that soup is not food.
Soup, if anything, is a beverage.
In the same way people keep telling me that coffee does not count as a meal, soup clearly belongs in the drink category of the nutrition pyramid.
Vegetable broths are suspiciously close to warm juice. “Oh, no!” I can hear you say, rushing to the defence of your lunchtime cup of soup. “Soup is much different than juice! It has pieces of vegetables in it!”
Well, so does a bloody Mary. Is a bloody Mary a kind of soup?
I rest my case.
Apart from vegetable soups, chicken noodle soup is basically noodles that someone has forgtotten to drain the water out of. Creamy soups are basically savoury and hot smoothies.
Here’s a joke for you: what’s the difference between ketchup and tomato soup? Ketchup has been allowed to boil a little longer. If you want to argue against it as a beverage, I could easily retort that soup is basically a condiment. Go ahead and dip a grilled cheese sandwich in there – I guarantee it’ll be delicious.
Don’t get me wrong, I love soup. There’s nothing better when forced to bed with a flu or a hangover. But you know why it performs so admirably in such circumstances? Because it’s the only thing a person can keep down when they can’t handle real food.
I don’t know how many more ways you want me to say it – soup is fake food. It’s like a diet scheme from the ‘80s that tricks consumers into drinking flavoured water as a meal replacement. That’s all soup is! Flavoured water!
Rise up, fellow citizens of the lunch room. Demand that this age of soup trickery come to a close! Don’t let this beverage-in-meal’s-clothing pull the wool over your eyes any longer. Order a sandwich to go with that soup and revel in the substance you will receive. After all – if beer isn’t a meal, then I don’t believe this dishonest hot juice should be either.
