Marks & Spencer chicken, barley & root vegetable soup review – simply fuller longer

Description: “A light broth of chicken of chicken, vegetables, pearl barley and smoked bacon.” Other than the bacon, which was missing, this is about right. Emphasis on the carrots and potatoes.

Health: 200 calories for a 400g pot, which is good, but not particularly high on protein or fibre, so… meh.

Taste: Meh. Vegetables suspended in light, heavily spiced broth. Cabbage in broth does taste pretty good but when that’s the height of praise… it’s basically standard chicken soup and therefore totally uninspired.

Full-o-meter: Rubbish. 200 calories, low fibre, low protein… needed toast to top me up to 400 calories AND I broke and had a cookie too, which is my own damn fault, but not helped by the meagreness of the soup.

Verdict: 2/5. Not having this one again. It didn’t taste actively unpleasant, but wasn’t good in any substantive way.