Soup is not a beverage, but it is something else

Salad alignment chart courtesy of GitHub

Let’s address the elephant in the room: soup simply isn’t a beverage. So, soup is just soup, right? Wrong. As it turns out, soup may fall into another category of food. That’s right—soup is a salad. 

Now, before you use this silly little Lamron article as bonfire fuel, or a replacement for the toilet paper you’ve been meaning to buy, just hear me out. According to salad theory, an internet theory that has its own website and is definitely worth checking out, there are many different classifications as to what can be considered a salad. 

While “hardline traditionalists” argue for only a very specific type of salad being considered salad, those who accept variations of salad ingredients and structure are more accepting of the diversity that different salads have to offer. For example, tomato soup is made with tomatoes, which many consider to be a hallmark of salad. Additionally, chicken soup is basically a warmer and wetter pasta salad with chicken in it. 

It’s common for hardline traditionalists, also known as “salad gatekeepers,” to argue that salads are not cooked. But this argument ignores the existence of ingredients that require cooking before being eaten, such as chicken in a chicken Caesar salad, potatoes in a potato salad and pasta in a pasta or macaroni salad. 

Of course, it would be crazy for me to stretch the bounds of a salad too far. I’m certainly not going to argue that a bowl of ice or a glass of coke is a salad, even though some salad radicals would argue as such. However, I simply wish to challenge society’s narrow-minded conventions of what a salad can be.

Now, when we flip this argument, it is difficult to know where to draw the line. In other words, is it possible for a salad to be considered a soup? What if someone uses so much dressing that the salad begins to float in the bowl—is it soup now? We could even take it more locally to RJ where they often serve fruit salad, composed of grapes, honeydew and cantaloupe. Occasionally, they will have strawberries at the salad station, drowning in sugary preservatives. Now, what if I were to add grapes to those strawberries—they’re floating in liquid right? So is it a soup or a salad? Why not both.

Now, it can’t go without saying that distinctions can be made by the eating utensils used, but this can’t be the end-all-be-all argument. “Everyone uses a spoon for salad” is inaccurate because some people use chopsticks for their soup, and some weirdos use forks. Of course, there is one wild card in this argument that makes obsolete the arguments of salad gatekeepers and salad diversifiers alike. That wild card is, of course, the existence of the spork. 

Like I said earlier, before you use this article as toilet paper, think about all the evidence together. Soup many times contains ingredients commonly used in salads, such as chicken or tomatoes. It can at times follow similar conventions to fruit salad, such as sometimes being a little watery, with a variety of ingredients. And, finally, there are inclusive utensils, namely the spork, that allow for soup to be eaten with a fork-like tool. Now, after reading this article, you may still vigorously disagree with my opinion. However, regardless of whether or not you agree or disagree with me, just remember to keep an open mind concerning matters such as soups and salads.