CAMDEN, N.J. – If your lunch still consists of a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, chances are you grew up using a typewriter.

Generations of Americans have moved on from Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle and tomato soups in search of heartier varieties with more sophisticated flavors. Now, the world’s largest soup company is racing to do the same.

Campbell Soup Co. last year began a quest that led executives to a diverse group of cities including Portland, Ore., and London to figure out how to make soups that appeal to younger, finicky customers. The 143-year-old company plans to roll out 50 products such as Moroccan Style Chicken and Spicy Chorizo. The ingredients may surprise those used to a plain bowl of soup: tomatillos, coconut milk and shitake mushrooms.

The new soups also won’t look like the big, gelatinous chunks that came in the steel cans that built Campbell into an iconic brand. These soups come in plastic pouches that are easy to open and heat up in a microwave in less than three minutes.

The remake could be a do-or-die task for Campbell. Overall canned-soup consumption is down 13 percent over the past decade, according to the research firm Euromonitor International, as fresh soups have become more widely available at supermarkets and restaurants. And Campbell now has about 53 percent of the market, down from 67 percent a decade earlier.

Campbell’s changes also illustrate how difficult it is for brands that appeal to older customers to become relevant to Millennials. This group, defined as those ages 18 to early 30s, is heavily sought after by companies and marketers. But Millennials have little in common with their parents when it comes to eating habits and cooking methods.

“I grew up with salt, pepper and ketchup,” said Chuck Vila, who heads Campbell’s customer insights division, which surveys the marketplace for trends. “These guys are playing around with really interesting spices from around the world.”

George Veszpremy, a 32-year-old music director at a radio station in Boston, has fond memories of his mother sending him to school in the morning with a thermos of Campbell’s chicken noodle.

“As a kid, you eat it, and it’s great. It served the purpose at the time,” said Veszpremy, noting that the soups were a cheap way for his single mother to give him a quick, comforting meal.

But looking back, he said he realizes that the soup wasn’t the best quality – the noodles were soggy and thin, the chicken pieces were minuscule and there were no vegetables. Veszpremy said his tastes have evolved: He sticks to homemade or the soup bar at the supermarket.