I was eating my lunchtime salad, and on a whim (because it was a chill, blustery day) decided that I’d really like some soup. So I grabbed a can from the cupboard and heated up some Campbell’s tomato soup. I didn’t check the label, because, you know, tomato soup. What would be in it? Tomatoes, broth, maybe some onion, and salt, right?

One sip, and I was shocked to find it tasted sweet.

My first thought was that eating low carb had sensitized me to the taste of sweet, and I guess it has (I’d always perceived Campbell’s tomato soup as salty in the past) but it’s not just that.

After that one spoonful, I looked at the label. A 1/2 cup serving of soup has an astonishing 20 g of carbs, 12 of them from sugar. The number two ingredient is high fructose corn syrup!

I know I shouldn’t find this as surprising as I did. If it’s processed food, of course it’s going to have high fructose corn syrup. I just hadn’t thought of it, because even a week and a half into eating low-carb, I hadn’t needed to get into the habit of checking labels.

Jackie cooks almost all our meals (although I’m cooking a good share of mine, while I’m doing the low-carb thing). We rarely eat processed food, but we keep some on hand so we can satisfy just this sort of sudden urge.

The upshot is that I haven’t had to get in the habit of checking the nutrition labels, because most of what we eat scarcely has labels—because we eat food, not industrially manufactured food-like substances.

I ended up eating about three tablespoons of the soup, and then putting it in the fridge. Maybe we can make some use of it, putting the odd spoonful here and there into some dish that needs a little tomato and little salt—and a little sugar.