Vegging out

On the menu tonight is a tin of Heinz Eight Vegetables soup and half a loaf of homemade bread. My scurvy-ridden carcass will take any vegies it can get, but out of interest, I consulted the label to uncover the octet in question. Celery, sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, onion, red capsicum, zucchini, peas, spinach...um, isn't that nine? Oh, I get it, they're being cute and not counting zucchini because it's a fruit and no-one wants to eat fruit soup. Except, aren't peas legumes? In which case, they should be left off the tally as well. Then again, both are treated as veg for the purposes of cooking, so common sense says it's really Nine Vegetables soup. I dunno what they're playing at over at Heinz HQ, but at least they resisted including corn. If you haven't watched the 2008 documentary "Food, Inc.", MASSIVE subsidisation of that crop by the US government (a practice which our govt and others have formally bitched about) means it's in EVERYTHING. But hang on, what's next on the list of ingredients? Goddamn maize starch. I'm sure a corn extract doesn't remotely qualify as a 10th vegie. Er, does it?