Ready-made soups often contain gluten, which is suprising to most of us when we find out we must avoid consuming it. In fact, most Campbell’s soups contain gluten – including their famous cream of “everything” soups. Luckily, Progresso has reformulated many of their soups to be both gluten and MSG free. The list of safe soups keeps growing on the Live gluten-freely website. In fact, both the white clam chowders in the line are now gluten-free as well. I don’t like that type of soup so I haven’t tried either the regular or 99% fat free version from Progresso.
When I ate gluten, one of my all time favorite soups was the Manhattan Clam Chowder made by Campbell’s. Since it contains wheat, I haven’t had it in over four years. However, the Progresso version of that soup is gluten-free and even labeled as such these days. The first time I tried the soup, I could not believe how delicious it was. It was better than I ever remember the Campbell’s version being. What an absolute delightful discovery that was!
It’s not really soup weather in Hotlanta, but Progresso soups were on sale for 2 for 1 recently, so I stocked up on the Manhattan Clam Chowder. Someone else stocked up on my other faves from the line because Publix was out of all of them. The flavors in the clam chowder are really excellent. The potatoes, celery and carrots are perfectly tender and the clams themselves are really wonderful. It’s an added bonus that the soup has 7% of your RDA of fiber per serving. There is some confusion about the statement “no MSG added” on products today. In the case of this soup, the MSG in the soup is naturally occurring in the yeast extract in it. There is also some confusion about whether or not MSG contains gluten. It actually does not and never has. MSG stands for monosodium glutamate and somewhere along the way, someone translated that info into the additive containing gluten.
I try to avoid products that contain added MSG – like many mainstream snack foods and a host of other products – because it doesn’t agree with me. However, when it’s the naturally occurring version as in yeast extract, it doesn’t bother me at all. In addition to being gluten-free, the Progresso version of Manhattan Clam Chowder is low in fat, has no artificial flavors or added MSG and contains only 100 calories per serving. Presently, the gluten-free soups are not available in the Progresso soup cups. Hopefully, that will also change in the future. I’m sure people who take their lunch to work would be thrilled to find gluten-free Progresso soup cups to take to the office or even to visit friends or family out of town.
General Mills is very interested in hearing from consumers in our market so if you want to see some Progresso soup cups, give the company a call and let them know. Their toll free number is 1-800-248-8330. You can also e-mail the company through the General Mills website.
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