Soup can play many roles, from comfort and sick-day food to meals-on-the-run and even the first of many courses in a big meal. Depending on how you use it, soup can help you work toward your health goals or make them harder to achieve. Used well, soup can help you control your weight, lower your risk of cancer and heart disease, and supply the nutrients you need for overall health and well-being. In studies by Barbara Rolls, at Pennsylvania State University, people were given the same foods in either the form of a casserole(砂锅) or a soup. When these dishes were served as a first course before lunch, people consumed about 27% fewer calories at lunch after a soup than after a casserole. They didn’t feel hungrier and didn’t compensate by eating more at dinner. Rolls suggests that eating soup as a first course or as a main meal can help with weight loss in several ways, by filling the stomach and satisfying our sensory desire to taste and enjoy food. Soup is also an ideal medium for getting one or more extra vegetable servings. The problem is that many commercial “vegetable” soups contain less than half a serving of vegetables. If you like the convenience of commercial soup, use it as a base and add vegetables leftover from a previous meal. If the soup is too thick for your taste, thin it out with a little water or tomato-vegetable juice.