Campbell's Select Gold Label Soups

[Tesseract]

I had their Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato flavor today, and I noticed belatedly that it has a large green seal on the back reading, "Vegetarian/No Preservatives." Times, they are a'changin' when a large company like Campbell's sees fit to label their products with a vegetarian seal. :up: A visit to Campbell's website suggests that Campbell's is intentionally marketing these as a line of vegetarian soups-- albeit subtly.

Campbell's Gold Label line includes 5 flavors, including Blended Red Pepper Black Bean, Golden Butternut Squash, Creamy Portobello Mushroom, and Italian Tomato with Basil and Garlic. They all apear to be vegetarian according to the ingredients, and carry the "Vegetarian" seal. However, they are not vegan, as they all contain milk and/or cream.

Despite the cream, I believe all but one of them qualifies as low fat. For example, the Roasted Red Pepepr and Tomato has 120 calories per serving, 20 calories from fat, with 2 grams of fat per serving. The bad news is that thanks to that milk and cream, 1.5 of those fat grams are saturated fat.

I wasn't crazy about the flavor of the Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato-- it's flavored with chipotle, which gives it a bit of spiciness and smokiness that's vaguely reminiscent of a bowl of barbecue sauce. I'd much rather have the pepper and tomato bisque at Panera, even though it's loaded with cream and far from low fat. I give it 2/5 stars.

Of course, several of the flavors duplicate flavors made by Imagine, and Imagine's vegetable soups are vegan, so if you like Imagine already, there's no real reason to buy this.

[epski]

http://www.sharkonline.org/campbellcrueltyethics.mv

[Tesseract]

Imagine that... Campbell's Soup, a company that puts dead chickens, dead cows, and maybe dead pigs, as well as the products of enslaved cows and chickens, in many of their products, doing a dreadful thing like supporting rodeos. Gosh. The mind boggles. :think:

If we boycott vegetarian products solely because the companies that sell them also make meat products or do things like support rodeos, those companies will never get the message that there is a demand out there for products free of dead meat. If they can't make money selling vegetarian products, they simply won't sell them. That means fewer vegetarian products for us. :notvegan:

Should we boycott Amy's, too, because many of their products contain dairy? Honestly, how many companies do you know of that make only vegan food products? And do those few companies supply everything you ever want to buy? Even if you can personally say yes, I think most of us here are not willing to limit our universe of groceries that stringently.

[PirateAargh]

I have to say I agree with you, Tesseract. If people aren't making money, they'll just assume no one wants the product. It's like with anything else, and a basic to business... no one wants to waste money on things they aren't going to be reimbursed for/make a profit off of, so if no one supports vegetarian things the company will go back to making all meat/cruel things and just trash their steps towards making more humane products. Nothing can be changed in a day, but it takes a lot of support of something to make it better for everyone. Think about events in history... abolition, suffrage... those took a lot of time and very slow steps... people supported the tiniest things until they finally chipped away enough to get through. Animal rights are the same way, and if things that are good aren't supported, no one is going to further the cause, just go on to more popular ideas.

Another reason I agree is because of something I've noticed lately... as we all know, the cruelty to animals factor is horribly high in the more affordable household products and food and stuff... people have worked to develop the cheapest ways to grow things using chemicals, hormones and other things bad for the environment and cruel to any animals that might be involved. I used to think people were just really awful, but recently I realized that the problem is so many people think that things like natural cleaners, organic foods or the idea of vegetarianism are just weird. My parents are like that, my grandmother, pretty much everyone I know from the South. Therefore, non-tested, vegan, natural and other such things are hard to find and expensive, because there's a low demand, and so no one has the money to spend on developing more cost-effective methods for producing ethical products. It's frustrating to people like me, who can't really afford to be spending so much money on things... I have to go without a lot of things that would be cheap if I didn't care about animal testing and such. If more people supported this kind of thing (i.e. all the people that think it's weird and buy the bad stuff), then it would become more and more popular. I wish people would to that for the environment and conservation too while they were at it...

On a final note, would you stop being friends with someone just because they ate meat or supported something else unethical to you?

[Guacivore]

I believe that this sort of labelling is definitely a step in the right direction, esp. here in the U.S.

I was very impressed during visits to the UK and Ireland to see that almost all of their products that were suitable for vegetarians (and, though less frequently, vegans) were labelled as such. It has irked me that we don't have that level of awareness here, so I'm glad to hear that some companies are starting to catch on.

[epski]

Imagine that... Campbell's Soup, a company that puts dead chickens, dead cows, and maybe dead pigs, as well as the products of enslaved cows and chickens, in many of their products, doing a dreadful thing like supporting rodeos. Gosh. The mind boggles. :think:

If we boycott vegetarian products solely because the companies that sell them also make meat products or do things like support rodeos, those companies will never get the message that there is a demand out there for products free of dead meat. If they can't make money selling vegetarian products, they simply won't sell them. That means fewer vegetarian products for us. :notvegan:

Should we boycott Amy's, too, because many of their products contain dairy? Honestly, how many companies do you know of that make only vegan food products? And do those few companies supply everything you ever want to buy? Even if you can personally say yes, I think most of us here are not willing to limit our universe of groceries that stringently.

The point isn't that they manufacture food made from animal products, which the mainstream still accepts as necessary, but that they support rodeos, which are inherently cruel and clearly unnecessary. Your sarcasm is neither necessary nor appreciated. You come off like an omni who's upset that my choosing veganism reflects badly on his or her food choices: very defensive.

[Tesseract]

The point isn't that they manufacture food made from animal products, which the mainstream still accepts as necessary, but that they support rodeos, which are inherently cruel and clearly unnecessary. Your sarcasm is neither necessary nor appreciated. You come off like an omni who's upset that my choosing veganism reflects badly on his or her food choices: very defensive.
I disagree-- that is EXACTLY the point. Rodeos and meat are merely two faces of the same issue-- the exploitation of and cruelty to animals for our pleasure. Rodeos and meat-based foods are equally unnecessary. They both exist purely to serve pleasures and tastes that have been cultivated in a society that treats animals as a commodity and doesn't consider animal cruelty an important ethical issue.

I personally see no qualitative moral difference whatsoever between supporting any of the following hypothetical businesses:
a) One that enslaves animals in cruel conditions and kills them for food
b) One that enslaves them in cruel conditions and exploits their products for food
c) One that enslaves them in cruel conditions and exploits them for entertainment, or sponsors other entities that do so.

Quantitatively, I strongly suspect (although again, I haven't studied the issue) that Campbell's is bringing more suffering into the world by making and selling animal-based foods than by sponsoring rodeos. So there are plenty of good, and maybe better, reasons to boycott Campbell's, if that is what one believes necessary, before one even reaches the issue of rodeos.

The bottom line is, we have to make a decision that is both moral and practical as to whether we feel comfortable supporting any of those companies to further our own purposes, and logically that decision should apply across the board. Therefore, avoiding a Campbell's product solely because of issue (c) but buying another product despite issues (a) and (b) strikes me as singularly illogical.

As far as how the mainstream market views rodeos relative to eating meat and whether one or the other is viewed as more or less cruel or unnecesasary, I can only speak for the area where I live. In Texas, if there is anything more sacrosanct than barbecue and high school football, it's a rodeo. You might as well propose abolishing Thanksgiving and Christmas together. So in that sense, it is culturally viewed in this part of the world as being just as "necessary" as meat-based foods. Again, the issues are more similar than you seem to think.

You're coming off as someone who wants to punish companies who are making an effort to serve an emerging vegetarian market because they're not changing their ways quickly enough to suit you. If we don't reward the first step because it wasn't big enough, there won't be a second step.

Oh, and I'll be sure to poll the board before posting in the future to see if sarcasm would be appreciated. :juggle:

[VeganForHealth]

I'm a little more sympathetic with epski than people might think. There are a limited amount of "Vegan dollars" to go around and I think we should be careful where we spend them.

It's kind of like how Coke started making Fruitopia. Snapple had come out making a whole line of beverages that had juice and tea in them, because Coke stubbornly refused to make anything but unhealthy sugar water because the proffit margins are so high. ...Then finally, when a company demonstrates what the public wants, Coke tries to muscle in on their territory by making Fruitopia.

It's great that some mainstream companies are making vegetarian products. It shows the movement has been succeeding rather than failing. But there is no guarentee that it will keep succeeding.

As to where I spend my dollars, it will preferably be with the companies that adhere closest to the Vegan standard. ...Because those are the companies who will strive harder to find and develop foods that meet my strict standard, and won't comprimise for marketing or take the lazy way out to make food taste good. (By adding animal fats, salt, and sugar.) The Vegan standard is the healthiest standard, and I feel like Vegetarians split their buying strength by being lured away by companies that are purely motivated by dollars, and keep smaller companies from succeeding in a tough marketplace.

I think we all know that GardenBurger is going out of business. This is a shame. They make a great product for a group of people who have long been ignored. And I have mixed feelings about Bocca, who haven't abandoned their original Vegan product, but have made every new burger surreptitiously contain dairy. (There's cheese in almost all of their new burgers, and no markings.) ...For a strict vegetarian (like me) or a Vegan, there's nothing more offensive than being duped into eating a product that advertises itself to be what you're looking for, but in fact is exactly NOT what you're looking for.

I'm not a moral Vegan. But the Vegan standard is the healthiest, and I think these larger companies are seeking vegetarian dollars in a lazy corporate way, by offering the lowest standard of what vegetarian means.

...The pioneers of Vegan food should be rewarded. So given the choice, that's where I'll spend my money.

[Tesseract]

I think that's an interesting way of looking at it, and you'll note I pointed out in my original post that there's no point buying Campbell's if Imagine already makes a vegan version of what you want.

But why look at vegan (or vegetarian) dollars as a limited pie? The thing I most hope Campbell's can accomplish here, if this product line is successful, is to expand the pie by enticing customers who wouldn't otherwise make a point of seeking out a vegetarian product to try it, decide they like it, and maybe keep buying it. I would feel the same way about any veg*n product being marketed by a mainstream company. I see any step in the right direction, even a small one, as a good thing. Of course, that doesn't mean more steps don't need to be taken. But clearly changing the face of cuisine (and social behavior) is not going to happen overnight.

Of course, we've gotten well away from the original point of the thread, which whether the soups are any good.

[VeganForHealth]

...Yeah, it's the lowest standard thing that bothers me.

How good are they? ...They have diary so I guess I'll never know.

[Tofu-N-Sprouts]

...
How good are they? ...They have diary so I guess I'll never know.

My thoughts too - they actually "look" and sound like they'd be good. And cheaper than the "Imagine" ones, but darn-it-all... WHY OH WHY must they put a bit of dairy in everything!

[Trueveggie14]

Thai Kitchen soups are very tasty, many are vegan, and a lot cheaper than Campbell's or Imagine.

http://www.thaikitchen.com/dietaryinfo.html

[PirateAargh]

Hey I'm from Texas too! My parents used to get angry when I stopped eating meat... my mom thinks I'm sickly and going to die soon, as does one of my friends, and my dad used to make all sorts of remarks and have angry fits at every meal. My grandma is always complaining about how she won't make anything but good old fashioned food with meat and so if she cooks for us we have to go buy something for ourselves, and everyone I know there thinks I'm insane for using natural/cruelty-free products... anyway, Tesseract, that's so weird! And cool that someone else knows where I'm coming from.

[IamJen]

On a final note, would you stop being friends with someone just because they ate meat or supported something else unethical to you?

Now, *that* would be an interesting thread. However, I see this as apples/oranges (individual vs. corporation). Also, I don't see rodeos, etc. as the same thing as omnivorism. People generally think that they need meat, dairy etc for their nutritional value. No one's health is going to suffer from not going to the rodeo.

[organica]

I'm a little more sympathetic with epski than people might think. There are a limited amount of "Vegan dollars" to go around and I think we should be careful where we spend them.

As to where I spend my dollars, it will preferably be with the companies that adhere closest to the Vegan standard. .

I'm not a moral Vegan. But the Vegan standard is the healthiest, and I think these larger companies are seeking vegetarian dollars in a lazy corporate way, by offering the lowest standard of what vegetarian means.

...The pioneers of Vegan food should be rewarded. So given the choice, that's where I'll spend my money.

:lovesign:

[CarbLover]

Well, I like them. It's nice to find a mainstream, ready-made soup in a variety of flavors that is vegetarian. My grocery store does sell the Fantastic Foods soups but they are all freeze dried and I just don't care for that kind of soup much. Most other soups contain some kind of meat broth even if they don't have meat. I'm of the opinion that more mainstream vegetarian products is a good thing

The blended black bean and red pepper is really delicous. The italian tomato and basil is good, too. Plain tomato soup doesn't seem as good anymore. I didn't like the butternut squash kind much, even though I love butternut squash normally. Haven't tried the other two. I don't like mushrooms anyway. I wish they sold these flavors in microwavable bowls so I could bring them to work. Yes I know I could just pour them into a plastic bowl myself, but I am a bit lazy--well more like tired and not very organized in the morning.

[epski]

I disagree-- that is EXACTLY the point. Rodeos and meat are merely two faces of the same issue-- the exploitation of and cruelty to animals for our pleasure. Rodeos and meat-based foods are equally unnecessary. They both exist purely to serve pleasures and tastes that have been cultivated in a society that treats animals as a commodity and doesn't consider animal cruelty an important ethical issue.

I personally see no qualitative moral difference whatsoever between supporting any of the following hypothetical businesses:
a) One that enslaves animals in cruel conditions and kills them for food
b) One that enslaves them in cruel conditions and exploits their products for food
c) One that enslaves them in cruel conditions and exploits them for entertainment, or sponsors other entities that do so.

Quantitatively, I strongly suspect (although again, I haven't studied the issue) that Campbell's is bringing more suffering into the world by making and selling animal-based foods than by sponsoring rodeos. So there are plenty of good, and maybe better, reasons to boycott Campbell's, if that is what one believes necessary, before one even reaches the issue of rodeos.

The bottom line is, we have to make a decision that is both moral and practical as to whether we feel comfortable supporting any of those companies to further our own purposes, and logically that decision should apply across the board. Therefore, avoiding a Campbell's product solely because of issue (c) but buying another product despite issues (a) and (b) strikes me as singularly illogical.

As far as how the mainstream market views rodeos relative to eating meat and whether one or the other is viewed as more or less cruel or unnecesasary, I can only speak for the area where I live. In Texas, if there is anything more sacrosanct than barbecue and high school football, it's a rodeo. You might as well propose abolishing Thanksgiving and Christmas together. So in that sense, it is culturally viewed in this part of the world as being just as "necessary" as meat-based foods. Again, the issues are more similar than you seem to think.

You're coming off as someone who wants to punish companies who are making an effort to serve an emerging vegetarian market because they're not changing their ways quickly enough to suit you. If we don't reward the first step because it wasn't big enough, there won't be a second step.

Oh, and I'll be sure to poll the board before posting in the future to see if sarcasm would be appreciated. :juggle:

You misunderstand my position and accuse me of coming off in a way that misrepresents me, and you suggest that I care whether anyone else appreciates your sarcasm toward me when I brought it up on behalf of myself. I find discussing this issue with you to be unnecessarily full of conflict. It's okay to disagree, especially when people actually are clear what they disagree on, but I don't see the need to be ****ty about it.

I don't have time to debate your post point by point, but you have my point of view wrong, so I'll just restate it:

I don't boycott stores that sell animal products nor companies that manufacture them (I buy Silk products from Dean, for instance, and shop at Whole Foods Markets). Many of these companies, Campbell's included, would go out of business overnight if they withdrew all those products from the market and went vegan. It takes the time it takes to bring more people into the fold, and we take what improvements we can as that happens, as I frequently and loudly acknowledge (visit veganfreaks.org/index.php?id=117 for evidence of that, if necessary). That said, Campbell's could stop supporting the rodeo immediately and it wouldn't effect their business in any remarkable way. Also, it's a very simple matter to find non-Campbell's products to replace them, so it's not like I'm suggesting the impossible.

As for my point about perceptions, the vast majority of people I know are still omni and any given one of them would either suggest that you need animal products to be healthy or that it's too hard to be live a healthy lifestyle in today's busy world without them, so they take the lazy way out. But they'd all agree that rodeos aren't necessary, despite the possibility that some of them might consider it an important part of a cultural tradition. While I don't deny that all exploitation of animals is related in some way, my overall suggestion is that some boycotts are more effective than others, especially when backed with activism such as letter-writing campaigns, letting them know why you're boycotting them.

Anyway, you seem more interested in disagreeing with me than really understanding what I'm trying to say, so I'll leave it at that.

[Tesseract]

Great, so we can get back to the soup, then??

[epski]

Knock yourself out. I never intended to derail a thread by simply posting a link.