HEINZ has changed the recipe of its canned cream of tomato soup for the first time in nearly a century.

The ever-popular soup, which has sold around 500,000 tins a week since 1910, has received a makeover in response to criticism from the Government and the healthy-eating lobby.

The new recipe has 20 per cent less salt, 18 per cent less fat, 10 per cent less sugar and 13 per cent more tomatoes.

Heinz has mobilised 20,000 “souper troopers” to switch millions of tins in UK supermarkets.

Around 620,000 tins of cream of tomato have been cleared from shelves and by the end of the week six million tins, including all 13 soups from the Heinz Classic range, comprising varieties such as minestrone, oxtail and mulligatawny, will be replaced. All the soup removed from shelves is to be donated to the Salvation Army.

The makeover addresses concerns about levels of salt in food. Heinz has responded to a government call for a 55 per cent reduction in the salt content of soups.

Last year the company, which claims to use enough tomatoes to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every day to produce its tomato-based products, was criticised for claiming that half a can of cream of tomato soup made up two of the “five-a-day” portions of fresh fruit and vegetables that the Government promotes. But both portions would have been tomato, not different fruit and vegetables.

Heinz was also criticised when the Food Standards Agency belatedly realised that the company’s claim that its tinned baked beans and spaghetti could also count toward the five-a-day total would encourage consumers to exceed the recommended daily allowance of salt (6g for an adult) and give them unhealthy amounts of sugar and fat. The company withdrew the claim.

In addition to revising the recipes of its standard canned products, Heinz has introduced nine new varieties of soup, including spicy butternut squash, sweet potato and rosemary and Mediterranean tomato and bacon.

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