Michael Pollan distinguishes between "Real" and "Fake" foods in his book In Defense of Food. Pollan classifies "real" foods as unmodified, basic foods like vegtables and "fake" foods as processsed products with additives and unnatural ingredients.
While thinking about what I have eaten in the past and what I eat now, I realized that chicken noodle soup is a major product that I have switched from "real" to "fake." When I was younger, I can destinctly recall my mother making me her delicious chicken noodle soup everytime I was sick. The soup took hours of preparation to chop the vegtables, cook the chicken, and let the broth set. Recently, I have unfortunately turned to the convenience of canned soup. The soup is cheap and takes only a few minutes to heat up, perfect for a college student.
The canned soup does share several qualities with my mothers soup. The canned soup has a delicious broth as well as some small pieces of chicken. In the can of soup there is a significant amount of protein as well as a few vitamins from the vegtables. Another thing the soup has, unlike my moms soup, is the additive monosodium glutamate, or MSG. MSG is used to enhance the taste in many foods. The additive can reduce the amount of sodium in a product, but otherwise is nutritionally empty. Nicholas Bakalar suggests MSG is may cause obesity in his article Nutrition: MSG Use Is Linked to Obesity. Knowing what I know now, the "fake" canned soup product in no way is a substitute for my mothers delicious "real" home-made soup.
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