ALL TOGETHER NOW – “SOUP IS SEXY!”
What is sexy? To us, it’s glowing skin, confidence, energy, vitality, a body that’s lean and efficient, a mind that’s clear and sharp, and a spirit that’s in love with life. These qualities aren’t age-dependent, and they’re yours for the taking. It simply comes down to what you eat, how you live, and keeping a positive frame of mind. Nature has used the same rules for vitality for a long time—if you break the rules, your skin doesn’t glow, your body and your brain feel sluggish, and chronic ailments start to creep up. Depriving your body of the nourishment it needs from a variety of whole foods can get pretty ugly, inside and out.
That’s why we think souping is sexy! It is a better, easier way to get all the good stuff—everything you need to look and feel amazing from the inside out. To put is simply, soup is about balance – neither exclusively raw nor cooked, not too acidic, not too alkaline, not hard on our systems, not devoid of good fat and carbs. Right now the health dialogue is very black-or-white: Kale is good and carbs are bad! Fat is good and sugar is bad! Fat is bad and sugar is good! Raw is good and cooked is bad! We may never know what most of these debates will amount to, but we do know this: Too much of anything is not a good thing. It’s all about balance.
Like lists? Here are the many reasons we think soup is sexy:
· It is nutrient dense and packed with whole foods. Souping is an easy way to get a ton of varied vegetables, healing herbs and superfoods into your diet. If you took all the ingredients in one of our soups and put them on your plate in whole food form, there’s no way you’d finish them without getting full, especially if you were chewing like a champ. Souping is a more efficient way to pack in the nutrition your body needs.
· It’s a food digester. Chewing is an essential part of the digestion process because by breaking down larger bits of food into smaller ones, you’re helping your stomach metabolize what you eat. Because blended soups contain foods that are broken down already, you can access all that nourishment without expending as much digestive energy.
· It’s a sure fire fiber fix. Your body loves fiber. It feeds the good bacteria in your gut, helps balance your blood sugar, keeps cholesterol in check, aids good digestion, and moves all the junk out of the trunk, naturally pulling out toxins from your intestinal track and colon it as it goes. Plus, it helps you get fuller faster and aids with weight loss. Not including it in the mix reduces most fruits and vegetables to simple sugars, which spike your blood sugar levels, leave your liver overworked, and imbalance your kidneys. That is why many people feel that sugar spike when doing other cleanses. But the average American consumes below the daily-recommended minimum of 20 grams of fiber. That’s creating the risk of developing conditions like heart disease, diabetes, diverticulitis, obesity, constipation, and certain cancers like colon cancer. That’s where eating soup comes in. By blending foods in their whole form, you’re getting a mega dose of fiber with every serving of soup you eat. Don’t believe us? Are you an evidence junkie? Check out this article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12146567 that shows how diets rich in fiber reduce coronary issues and Type 2 diabetes.
· It’s alkalizing. Our bodies are always seeking an alkaline state. It’s healthier for our joints, tissues, organs, and blood, and it’s the key to fending off disease. Any diet whose foundation consists of veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes, is like giving your body a soothing alkaline antidote, and you aren’t straining your digestive system with hard-to-digest foods.
· It gives you real vitamins. Walk down the aisle of any grocery store and you can see all the promises that manufacturers make: “Now with more vitamin C!” “Fortified with iron!” “Vitamin D added!” It sounds pretty good, especially because most people are deficient in these things. But what you’re seeing are synthetic vitamins that are created in a lab, not derived in their purest state from plants themselves. Not only are these vitamin impostors far inferior to the real things, but they’re often made from substances like tar and petroleum—so they just cannot be good for you. Your body thrives when you consume your nutrients from food. Homemade soups have the real deal when it comes to vitamins.
· Some food needs cooking. The body requires food in a variety of forms—raw and not raw—in order to feel optimally good. While eating raw food is necessary for good health, it’s important for your absorption of plant protein and your nutrient diversity to include gently cooked food too. According to ancient wisdom shared by traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda (Hindu medicine), warming foods are more healing, nourishing, and soothing to the body. They are the first real “comfort food” known to mankind. They also help stoke the digestive fire, which is at the center of your body’s ability to break down and assimilate foods and all their nutrients. Read more about raw versus cooked food in our upcoming blog: The Case for Cooked Food.
· It’s a beauty food. Any diet loaded with such a wide array of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, can help you age more slowly and look more beautiful. A diet rich in essential nutrients can give you glowing skin, lustrous hair, and stronger nails.
· It’s easy. The convenience is what first attracted us to soups—whether you cook them yourselves and freeze whatever’s extra, or purchase ours in ready to go bottles, you can have real “health in a bottle” meals that are quick to prepare and carry with you, whether it’s for school lunches, running errands, or bringing to work.
Still need convincing? Our friends at Spoon University recently embarked on Soupure’s 3-day soup cleanse after experimenting with other liquid cleanses. The author gives a beautifully detailed play-by-play account of her journey over the 3 days. She states, “Overall, this cleanse was incredible.” and gives souping a 10 out of 10! Check out the full article from Delish here: http://www.delish.com/food/a47961/why-you-should-try-a-soup-cleanse/
Whether souping through Soupure or on your own program, a diet rich in whole foods, proteins, good fats and complex carbohydrates; disease-fighting phytonutrients; and above all, loads of fiber, is crucial and the key to optimal health. When you find that balance, that’s pretty darn sexy.