With holiday cooking in full force (well, its always been non-stop in my kitchen!) we are all shopping and preparing festive meals that require a lot more broth than normal. When I saw what I had sitting in my pantry (bought with no thought to sodium), I knew I had to research better options. It’s shocking how much the sodium level varies from brand to brand and even within products from the same brand. I researched vegetable, chicken and beef broths since different recipes call for different flavors.

Vegetable Broth

For flavoring soups there is nothing that beats a good vegetable broth. I just took a small sample from a couple of stores and already found the sodium levels for 1 cup of broth ranging from 120mg to 630mg!

The vegetable broth winner – Organic Vegetable Broth Low Sodium from Pacific Foods that came in at the lowest (120mg sodium per cup).

Chicken Broth

Chicken Broth was a bit more tricky. There are regular broths, then organic, low sodium, reduced sodium and unsalted versions. But don’t be fooled by the product labels – the FDA rules for nutrient claims on what constitutes reduced sodium, lightly salted etc. are based off of the baseline for the original product and do not mean anything if you consider the actual sodium quantity. The sodium levels in the products above range from 360mg to 860mg of sodium per cup!! Wow!

Here are the better ones – sodium range from 35mg to 110mg of sodium per cup. Nice!

The chicken broth winner: Swanson Chicken Broth Unsalted (35mg of sodium per cup)

Beef Broth

I am not a big beef broth user but I did a small sample of 4 products just to get a sense and again found the same thing – sodium levels vary widely from 125mg to 480mg per cup.

The beef broth winner: Pacific Foods Organic Beef Broth Low Sodium (125mg of sodium per cup).

Given that you are able to buy packaged broths that give you the flavor and taste without compromising on the sodium levels, it begs the question – why even make the unhealthy versions? I certainly don’t get it but if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear it. Send me comments and as always suggestions for your favorite products that I may have missed!

Happy Cooking!