Starting today (and just in time for face-numbing winter temps!), Panera is serving its revamped lineup of no-artificial-anything soups, including French Onion and the beloved Broccoli Cheddar. MORE: The 5 Healthiest Soups from Your Favorite Lunch Spots Removing additives from the soups hasn’t been a cakewalk: According to head chef Dan Kish (above), the chain’s culinary team went through 60 revisions of the broccoli cheddar soup recipe before getting the taste just right while removing artificial ingredients. The final product no longer has preservative sodium phosphate, includes real butter instead of vegetable oil, and uses a completely reformulated Dijon mustard that’s additive-free (see the soup’s full ingredients list and nutrition information here). Panera chefs were also able to reduce the amount of sodium in their French Onion soup by one third. And then there’s Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice: The number of ingredients used to make these soups decreased from nearly 40 to just 20. The best part is that Panera’s soup cleanup won’t result in higher prices at the register. In fact, some of the cleaner soups actually cost the company less than the original recipes. (Want to make your own soups instead? Try one of these 8 soup recipes with 5 ingredients or less.) Don’t call it a carte blanche to eat cheesy, cream-based soup every day (and for the love of all things healthy, stay away from those bread bowls!). But it’s pretty nice knowing that when you do indulge, you’re eating soup that’s more simple than it was in 2015.
