Overview
Niebla-Canelo and colleagues measured aluminum, cadmium and lead by ICP-OES in 130 dehydrated instant soups (poultry, meat and vegetable types) bought in Tenerife, and estimated intakes from a 20 g dry portion. Vegetable soups had the highest levels of all three metals. Concentrations refer to the dry product as sold, not the reconstituted soup.
Key numbers
- Vegetable soups: cadmium 0.027 ± 0.016 mg/kg, lead 0.12 ± 0.13 mg/kg (maximum 0.85), aluminum 32.28 ± 19.26 mg/kg (Table 3).
- Poultry soups: cadmium 0.019 ± 0.009, lead 0.094 ± 0.16 mg/kg (maximum 0.86) (Table 3).
- Meat soups: cadmium 0.019 ± 0.0069, lead 0.058 ± 0.069 mg/kg (Table 3).
Methods (brief)
Samples were oven-dried, ashed at 450 °C, dissolved in dilute nitric acid and read by ICP-OES. Accuracy was checked with SRM 1515 apple leaves and SRM 1573a tomato leaves (recoveries 92.3 to 109.3%); detection limits are instrumental, in mg/L.
Evidence Fitness
A large retail sample (130 soups) with reference material checks and full summary statistics per soup type, but no collection dates and no per-brand data. Values are for the dry powder; a serving is diluted in about 250 mL of water. The soups are instant powders by broad type (poultry, meat, vegetable), so for the specific thin soups this is a proxy for broccoli-cheese-soup, chicken-noodle-soup, cream-of-potato-soup, ramen-soup, tomato-soup, vegetable-beef-soup and brown-gravy, and those pages are not linked.