I love miso soup!
Not only miso soup, I love eating in general!
This puts me in the position to cruise my way up to the metabolic syndrome. I do think it’s important to eat well-balanced meals and do some exercises for health.
I have passionately been talking about miso for a long time, and I have recently encountered an incident.
For work, I have opportunities to hear opinions from women in their 20’s often, and I met a woman who says “I don’t drink miso soup much” the other day.
I asked her why and she replied to me that miso soup is high in calories and salt. That’s why she hesitates to take it.
I carefully listened to her opinion, but I still thought miso soup is a suitable cuisine especially for people on a diet. It’s true that some say miso soup is high in salt. Of course, it depends on what type of miso you use, though.
In this article, I would like to focus on calories in miso soup which many dieters or women worry about.
First of all, what is “calorie calculation”?
Things we eat have energy which is equals to calories. The calories is like an enemy of people who are on a diet, but we must take the minimum calories necessary to sustain our lives healthily.
In order to lose weight efficiently, we need to take the minimum amount of necessary energy (calories) and burn our body fat. So, let’s review the facts of calorie calculation first.
To calculate the calories correctly, we refer to a book called “food composition table”. This book is not only for nutritionists, but also for people who are diabetic, or under food restrictions.
In this book, calories of ingredients and seasonings are precisely described. For example, in case I make miso soup with wakame seaweed, onions and fish stock powder, first, I weigh in the wakame seaweed and onions, then refer to the book to find their calories. Next, as the book shows the amount of calories contained in 100 g of each ingredient, I need to calculate the actual calories based on the figures. Then I need to do the same for miso and fish stock powder.
Yes, it is troublesome!
Calculating contained calories by ourselves is a pain. Commercial food products show their contained calories in their packages or on their backsides, but doing the same to homemade foods is really troublesome.
How high the calories in miso soup is?
Now, let’s roughly calculate the calories in homemade miso soup.
First of all, one bowl of miso soup without any other ingredients is about 40 kcal. It’s just rough figures, but miso has 35 kcal and fish stock has 5 kcal.
Next, calculate the calories in other ingredients. The whole calories in a bowl of miso soup differs depending on what ingredients you choose.
For tofu kinds, as they are made of soybeans, the calories are a little high. Deep-fried tofu has 58 kcal, 30 g of momen-tofu has 22 kcal, and 30 g of kinugoshi-tofu has 17 kcal. The smooth kinugoshi-tofu has lower calories than momen-tofu.
Tofu products are rich in soybean isoflavone, which is a crucial nutrient especially for women on a diet, so I recommend you to take it even you consider their calories.
Seaweed and mushrooms are also strong supporters to people on a diet. They are low in calories and rich in dietary fibers, so miso soup with these ingredients helps you to improve your bowel movements.
Mush rooms, such as enoki, shimeji and nameko are all lower than 5 kcal per one bowl of miso soup. Seaweeds are also lower than 3 kcal. If you chose these ingredients, the calories of a whole miso soup will be lower than 50 kcal. It’s a good diet recipe.
How high the calories of commercially available miso soups are?
As I have mentioned earlier, the calories of a homemade miso soup is determined by the calories of miso soup itself and other ingredients. Now, I’m going to talk about the calories of commercially available miso soups.
A famous commercial miso soup “Asage” produced by Nagatani-en has 30 kcal per 19 g. Its sister product “Yuuge” has 30 kcal, which is the same as Asage.
These two commercial miso soups use fresh type of miso, but the one which uses powder type of miso called “Nagatani-en Dry Type Asage” has 39 kcal per 1 bag, which is slightly higher than the previous ones. These commercial miso soups are very handy especially when we are busy, but there is a thing you had better to be careful with.
It’s the salt content.
We can adjust the amount of salt content by choosing low-in-salt type of miso or weakening the taste, but when using the commercial miso soups, the salt content of a product doesn’t change if we consume the whole even we add more water to it.
Taking too much salt is not good for health as this may cause swelling or high blood pressure.
Therefore, I recommend you to eat homemade miso soup daily, and only use instant ones when you are too busy to make the homemade ones.
Thank you for reading my blog till the end.
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