Here is why I love my wife. She says things like this: Whenever a company says “new and improved,” you know it’s just going to be worse.

It is a corollary of another, similar truism of hers: When an insurance company says they have exciting news for you, it means they’re going to give you less coverage for more money.

We were talking, as it happens, about canned soup. Canned soup has been new and improved so many times now that it bears only the faintest passing resemblance to real soup.

I don’t think this is an example of age-related rose-colored memories. You know, “The sky was bluer when I was young,” or “Movies were funnier when I was a child.”

I think it’s demonstrable fact. Or at least demonstrable opinion, which is the next best thing.

Back when movies were funnier and skies were bluer, I would happily make a meal of a can of soup. I’m kind of a big eater, so I would happily make a meal of a can of one of those 19-ounce cans of soup. Sometimes I would add, say, a smaller can of tomatoes to it for an extra treat.

I thought of that as an enhancement.

I have basically stopped buying canned soup altogether, with one notable exception (Worthmore brand mock turtle soup, for which I have an abiding and unshakable affection that is untempered by the knowledge that one of the ingredients is beef heart meat. As far as I know, it is only available in Cincinnati).

But my wife is the eternal optimist, if only when it comes to canned soup. She keeps buying it.

And she keeps being disappointed.

She recently opened a can of some sort of chicken thing from an organic soup company that, some years ago, made a product that was palatable. She took a sniff and wrinkled her nose, holding it up to me to smell.

She didn’t have to make the effort. I could smell it from where I was.

It didn’t smell bad as in it was too old and was experiencing some sort of bacterial unpleasantness. It smelled bad as in not good.

She went so far as to try a taste, though she didn’t bother to heat it up. It was aggressively bland.

It was also salty. It is my considered opinion that new and improved soups take out ingredients that add flavor and depth, and replace them with salt. The jolt of sodium tries to fool the mouth into thinking that it is enjoying a serving of slowly simmered aromatic vegetables and hearty chunks of chicken or beef.

That works up to a point. It works while there are still enough slowly simmered vegetables and heart chunks of whatever for the flavors to be brightened and awakened by the salt. But after a certain amount of cost-cutting, the paltry remaining vegetables are overpowered by the sodium.

Every grocery store in the country devotes half of an entire aisle to canned soup, so that means someone is out there eating it. They may even be enjoying it — if they don’t remember when it was tastier.

Canned soup is still economical, which may be its chief attraction — though ramen is cheaper and, to my mind, better (though its off-the-charts sodium levels make canned soup seem downright healthful). And you can always make either one more edible by adding enhancements that boost the flavor.

I like to enhance my mock turtle soup with a sliced hard-boiled egg, a splash of sherry and a squeeze of lemon.

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