Eating heatlhy is about eating food that is good for you. If you're going to eat pasta, make sure you eat whole wheat pasta, with healthy fiber and nutrients in it.

Remember, your body doesn't digest fiber. Fiber goes in one end, out the other, and keeps your digestive system clean along the way. It is shown on the nutrition label in the 'carbs' section, but you subtract it out of your net carb count because they don't count, literally. They aren't used by your body.

So let's take a look at the Ronzoni whole wheat pasta label. The spaghetti says 42g carbs, minus 6g fiber = 36g carbs per 2oz dry. The rotini is the same 52g - 6g = 36g per 2oz dry. Ditto for the rotini. These all give you 10% of your iron, 35% of yoru thiamin, 20% of your niacin, 30% of your folic acid and 15% of your riboflavin.

A comment on these serving sizes. 2oz is 3/4 cup which is a SMALL amount of pasta!! Even if this is just a side dish, that's not a large amount. A box has about 7 servings. Now ON the box they have a recipe for making the entire box of pasta, throwing in chicken, sauce, peppers, garlic, onions etc. and making a casserole. How many servings is that? THREE TO FOUR. How does this make sense? They admit right on the box with the recipe that an average person eats TWO "servings" with a full meal that includes other items.

Still, to test this out, I made two servings (i.e. 1.5 cups dry) of the rotini, and I wasn't able to eat all of it as a meal when I just had it with butter. I'm sure I eat less than some people do, so it definitely could be that some people eat the full two servings.

So then the issue is - you're taking in 72g of carbs just for one meal - just for pasta! That is a HUGE amount of carbs to take in. If you are about to go out and rake the back yard, that energy will go to good use. If you're planning on biking 20 miles to visit a friend, ditto. If you're going to plunk on the couch for a few hours of sedentary watching, then this is NOT a great idea. All that energy will go in you, circulate around in your blood for a short while, then get stored away as fat.

Now, that being said, I did blood sugar tests to see what this was doing to my blood sugar levels. Compared with other pastas, this is MUCH better for you because of the fiber and whole wheat. I began with a blood sugar reading of 81 mg/dL. A half hour after eating this, I was only up to 84 mg/dL. Even another hour later, it had only risen to 91 mg/dL. So while this does hit you with carbs, they are slow and steady.

As far as taste goes, they are a little on the "hard" side, even after 15 minutes of cooking, but if you have them with a sauce they are very nicely textured and have a relatively good flavor. They are MUCH better than the cardboardy tasting low carb varieties on the market. Plus they're very inexpensive!

In general, if you have activity or exercise planned for your day, and want some pasta to give you energy for it, then I definitely recommend this Ronzoni over any other standard pasta. You'll get great nutrition and non-blood-sugar-spiking energy. If you do NOT have exercise planned, I would avoid pasta, though. There's way too much fuel being supplied to you, and if you don't burn it off, it's going to go right into those fat cells.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books