12 Store-Bought Soups You Should Steer Clear Of Buying

We take store-bought soups for granted these days, but cans of condensed soups haven't been around for that long ... in the grand scheme of human history, at least. They hit the market in the late 1800s, and it took a bit of brilliance from MIT scientists to make canned soup not only profitable, but affordable and safe. The world saw a great idea and ran with it, and today, shelves are full to bursting with an almost overwhelming number of choices.

Whether you always keep some cans of cream of chicken soup on hand for a myriad of creative uses or if you're more a fan of a stellar soup-and-sandwich combination, you might have your favorites. If you're inclined to try something new, we would like to warn you that not all store-bought soups are created equal, and there are definitely some that you should steer clear of.

In order to bring you the best advice we could, we looked at a few things. We started with checking out reviews and social media posts discussing customers' experiences with various soup brands, and we found that there were some that were consistently disappointing. We also looked at sodium content, and were shocked by what we found. Although even reduced-sodium canned soups are often high in salt, there were a few varieties that we found to contain more than your daily recommended sodium intake in a single can. Do yourself a favor and give these soups a miss.

When we here at Tasting Table did a ranking of store-bought tomato soups, Campbell's Tomato and Tomato Bisque took two of the bottom three spots. (Between them was Pacific Foods Organic Garden Tomato Oat Milk soup, so we'll let you infer just how well we liked that one, too.) We found both of Campbell's tomato soups to have a weird, weak flavor that leaned more toward the artificial side of things than being everything an incredible, homemade, roasted tomato soup should be. They didn't have the body that a good tomato soup should, either, and delivered more on broth than on a creamy texture you might expect.

We're not the only ones who think so. When one Redditor wondered, "Why does Campbell's Tomato Soup taste like total s*** now?", others hopped on to agree that it's just way too sweet, too watery, and dissenting opinions basically suggested that no, it wasn't worse now simply because it has always been terrible.

Recent threads suggest that many customers are taking issue with quality and consistency. They claim to have gotten cans where the textures are off, that it's oily, separated, and orange instead of red. The overwhelming sweetness gets mentioned a lot, too, with some lamenting the fact that they had cans they didn't want to waste, but didn't want to eat, either.

We're going to start by saying that yes, there is one classic soup that you should never leave behind at Trader Joe's. That's the New England Clam Chowder, which is just downright delicious. However, there is a flip side to that, and there's one soup that we just can't recommend picking up from the fan favorite store: the Hearty Minestrone.

Part of the reason we named Trader Joe's Hearty Minestrone as the worst of the store's house branded soups is that there's just not much to it. It's pretty boring, as far as soup goes, and that's the other thing. This one doesn't bring much in the way of taste, but at the same time, it still manages to contain about 26% of your entire daily recommended intake of sodium. And it's just not worth it.

There's a few other things to consider here, too. It's easy to make a much better minestrone soup at home, especially with a few tips and tricks up your sleeve. It'll be flavorful, hearty, and filled with delicious veg ... which, incidentally, is the opposite of Trader Joe's version. Trader Joe's also has a variety of other soup options that are tasty and deserving of a spot on your pantry shelves, so reach for any other kind.

If you love clam chowder, there's a good chance that Snow's New England Clam Chowder might be a favorite. It is for a lot of people, with reviews that are generally favorable. It's hearty and many laud it for being the next best thing to homemade, but there's a massive catch.

That's the sodium content. Most store-bought soups have more sodium than what you might find in the soup you make at home, and if you've ever wondered why canned soup is so salty, it's because manufacturers know we love the taste of salt. Still, the sodium content of Snow's New England Clam Chowder is shocking. In one serving, there's 870 milligrams of sodium, which is about 38% of what you should be getting in a day. That serving size is just 1 cup, and since there's 2 servings in a whole can, that means it has 1,510 milligrams of sodium.

The American Heart Association says that added sodium is a huge health concern, and that most Americans get too much. It's also suggested that ideally, adults should limit their daily intake to 1,500 milligrams, and that aiming for a 2,300 milligram limit is a vast improvement on what many people consume in a day. Managing sodium intake is no joke, as too much has been linked to an increased risk of things like high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.

We really, really want to love a canned soup that advertises the fact that it doesn't add any extra salt to the pot, but when we here at Tasting Table ranked popular brands of canned soup from worst to best, we just couldn't love Health Valley — especially because that lack of added salt means that you'll need to add your own herbs and spices to this soup to get it to taste even halfway decent.

We're not the only ones who aren't really fond of Health Valley's Chicken Noodle, Minestrone, or Vegetable Soups. Thousands of customers have taken to Amazon to post exactly what they think of Health Valley, and while there are some that appreciate a no-salt soup, even many of those reviews suggest adding your own ingredients to get some flavor out of these. Honestly? If we have to add our own ingredients to canned soup, we'll just make our own, thanks very much.

Those who are a little more straightforward in their dislike for these soups say that they lean toward the bland side, that the broth is tasteless, and there's a surprising number of people who say that when they ordered these online, the cans came severely dented to the point where they didn't feel safe eating it. On the plus side, they weren't missing much of an experience.

Seafood soup might seem like a great alternative to your standard chicken noodle or vegetable soup, and at a glance, Cole's looks like it might be putting out a great product. This brand offers Clam Chowder, Patagonian Salmon Chowder, Maryland Style Crab Soup, and Chesapeake Cream of Crab Soup, which sounds like it would be a positively delightful assortment. Reviews for these soups are less-than-stellar, however, with unhappy customers taking to Amazon to report just how displeased they are.

Among the biggest complaints is the texture, and if you're expecting a thick and creamy chowder, unhappy customers suggest you're going to be very disappointed. If you're expecting chunks of seafood, you'll also be disappointed, as customers report finding only a few pieces of meat. Some describe it as being more along the lines of a fish-flavored potato (or tomato, depending on the variety) soup, which isn't great. 

It's also on the pricey side. As of the time of this writing, a pack of six 15-ounce cans of the New England Clam Chowder costs about $33, so it's perhaps unsurprising that another huge complaint is that it's definitely not worth the price. Even those that say the soup is just fine add that it's better when you add your own crab meat and seasonings, and for that price, you definitely shouldn't have to add anything to it.

There is certainly no shortage of delicious Ramen noodle recipes, but when Tasting Table put 16 different Instant soup brands to the test, we found that there were some clear losers. At the very bottom was Nissin's Cup of Noodles, that dorm-room staple that we admit we still kind of love. There's something about those few sad, lonely little pieces of veg and the flavoring that's best described as chicken-like or beef-like, but that doesn't mean we'd unfailingly turn it down. Should we? Probably, and here's why.

It's not surprising that one of those cups contains a lot of sodium — it's almost impossible to eat a Cup of Noodles without getting something to drink afterward, and that's why. One of the side effects of consuming too much sodium in a short amount of time is thirst, and let's talk about the chicken flavor. One cup contains 1,160 milligrams of sodium, and considering the American Heart Association puts the ideal daily intake at 1,500 milligrams, that's a ton of sodium to eat in a very short time.

Ever finish a Cup of Noodles and think that you feel a lot fuller than you should? Other things that can happen if you eat too much sodium too quickly include bloating, water retention, and even a spike in blood pressure. If you've ever felt cruddy after your Cup of Noodles, that could be why.

Gardein's Plant-Based be'f & vegetable soup is a vegan offering, and there's a few reasons that you should skip this one — starting with the sodium. We will give Gardein credit for considering one can of soup a single serving, but that serving of be'f and vegetable soup comes with 1,130 milligrams of sodium. (Remember, the American Heart Association says the ideal target should be 1,500 milligrams per day.) 

The be'f in question is Gardein's soy-based ground be'f, which gets some mixed reviews on the Gardein website. Some customers say it's delicious, but others say that a previous incarnation of the product was much, much better ... so that's a bit of a bummer. But is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

Apparently not, with customers heading over to Amazon to complain about it along with some of the other Gardein flavors, like the Chick'n & Rice. Common complaints include a funky, unappetizing smell, an equally unappetizing texture, and the high sodium. Even those that like the soup note that it needs some help in the form of added vegetables, potatoes, or rice to be the meal that they were expecting, while others complain about the texture of the faux meat substitutes. Why buy funky meat when you can just opt for a veg soup?

Take our hand for a moment, and let's take a stroll down memory lane. Dinty Moore's beef stew used to be a staple of quick and easy meals made by Gen-X latchkey kids, sometimes in prep for parents to come home from a long day at work, sometimes, just for themselves. It's been around even longer than that, and although Hormel boasts that not many changes have been made since it first hit shelves in the 1930s, that might not be a good thing.

Even on the Hormel website, Dinty Moore Beef Stew has a dismal 2.2 out of 5 stars, with the majority of ratings being just a single sad, lonely star. To say that customers aren't happy is an understatement, with many complaining that there's next to no actual beef in the beef stew anymore, and what there was, was questionable. Customers over on Walmart had left reviews that are only slightly more generous, with some suggesting that it's only good for leaving on the shelf for emergency rations, with plenty of others saying that now, it just tastes bad. 

Redditors agree as well, and it's a weird day when so many people on the internet agree about something. There are plenty of comments lamenting the change in taste and quality, and a lot of people wishing they would bring back the stuff from yesteryear. It turns out that as far as Dinty Moore goes, they really were the good ol' days.

Dr. Kellyann is a brand that touts using bone broth diets for things like weight loss and wrinkle reduction, and although bone broth is a major product, there's also a line of soups, too. The soups aren't as widely reviewed, but what reviews we could find for them seem to suggest that they're singularly awful. Thoughts are perhaps best summed up by one Redditor who observed, "This looks like someone ate a can of soup and then rinsed out the can and this is the can rinse."

That person wasn't alone in their observations, with others saying that it was just as bland and flavorless as it looked, with little more than broth in the so-called soup. Add in the price — which is, as of this writing, about $6.50 per can — and that all means customers that cannot recommend staying far enough away from this one.

That includes the very few customers who have ordered it then rated Dr. Kellyann's Chicken & Veggies soup over on Amazon. As of this writing, there's two comments there: One says it was sort of acceptable to eat while recovering from COVID, and the other pondered, "Wondering if this is soup for sick people."

If there's any soup that deserves the title of "Icon," it's this one. It's the stuff you ate when you were home from school with the sniffles, it's what was waiting for you when you came in from outside during the cold weather, and that's the thing: Redditors agree that it's more "stuff" than soup with one saying, "You just have to not really think of those little cubes as 'chicken' and those strands as 'noodles' and that yellow stuff as 'broth' ... it just is what it is," they volunteered, with another Redditor clarifying, "Campbell's 'Chicken' 'Noodle' 'Soup' ®"

Others suggest that the only reason anyone buys this stuff is because of the nostalgia factor, and nostalgia is a pretty powerful thing. And people are still buying it — as of this writing, there are nearly 4,000 reviews for Amazon's listing of a pack of four cans of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

Even if you find yourself picking up the occasional can for enjoying during cold and flu season or when you're feeling nostalgic, there's another reason to stay away from this one. One ½-cup serving contains 890 milligrams of sodium, which means one whole can contains 2,225 milligrams. That's about what the American Heart Association says you should have in an entire day, and way more than what they say you should ideally be aiming for. Plus, there's just plenty of other, better options out there.

Upton's Naturals looks like it might have everything good going for it, from the word "Naturals" right in the name of the brand, to a neat olde-timey label. They're vegan soups, and while that all seems promising, Upton's Naturals came in near the bottom of Tasting Table's ranking of popular canned soups. We found that it was just sort of fine for a vegan soup, but if you didn't read the fine print and picked up a can of Chick & Noodle thinking you were going to be getting chicken, you were going to be disappointed.

Reviews from customers over on Amazon agree, with some customers saying that they bought it thinking it was real chicken. What they got was tiny crumbles of seitan, which is a versatile meat alternative to tofu. However, according to some customers, it doesn't cut it in this soup. They report the broth has an oddly strong, unpleasant flavor, that it was thin and one person even called it "bleak."

Reviews for the other varieties of Upton's Naturals are just as up-and-down, with customers suggesting the best part of the brand is the logo and label, while the Chick & Wild Rice has about a quarter of all ratings giving it a single star. Others were annoyed to find it wasn't gluten-free, and the sodium is a concern here, too: One can of the Chick & Wild Rice has 1,070 milligrams.

Maruchan is another staple of college life, and similar to the closely-related Cup of Noodles, Maruchan also came in low in Tasting Table's ranking of instant soup brands ... even below the one that took an hour to cook, which is definitely not "instant." While there is something satisfying about the little crunch that comes from the few veggies that are in a serving of Maruchan's ramen, it's still a pretty poor example of what ramen can be. (That, of course, is delicious.)

There's also sodium to consider here, too. Let's take the chicken flavor: Zoom in on the teeny, tiny nutritional information on the website that was clearly written for ants, and you'll see that one serving size is ½ a pack of noodles and ½ a flavoring packet. Opt for eating the entire thing (and we can't imagine how disgusting this would be reheated), and you're getting 1,520 milligrams of sodium. That, remember, is about the ideal daily limit for sodium.

Not all varieties are created equal, either. The Chili Lime Shrimp flavor contains even more sodium, with 1,620 milligrams for the entire pack. And the pork still has more, with 1,800 milligrams. Sure, life is busy for everyone and the idea of a hot instant ramen that takes just minutes to make is tempting, but you can do much, much better.