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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Go Mediterranean with Pasta and there’s no better time than now, with summertime on the horizon! Okay, I can hear it now, “Pasta? Love pasta, but I just can’t eat it since I gain weight when I do”. Well, we all do if we eat too much of it! Pasta is truly a great carbohydrate food, which we love and try ever so hard to avoid. But just maybe, we can find a way to eat pasta and maintain our weight too. You see, I’m convinced that our low carbohydrate diets are setting us up for cravings, so this week let’s visit a popular top food staple of the Mediterranean Diet, Pasta, that is!
Is Pasta Healthy?
It is considered healthy when we eat it as part of an eating lifestyle such as we find in the Mediterranean Diet. In one recent study that I haven’t quoted yet (imagine, there’s one study left that I didn’t include?), scientists followed up on 7500+ participants over a 15 year period, and used 3 models of eating lifestyles, a) the Mediterranean Diet of daily pasta, vegetables, fruit, yogurts, olive oils, along with a moderate amount of wine; b) a healthy diet lifestyle of fruit, vegetables, whole-grain bread, low-fat dairy, with no alcohol, and lastly, c) an unhealthy diet consisting of white bread, processed meat, fries, and whole milk (do we recognize ourselves here?). Both the healthy and Mediterranean Diet eating patterns reduced risks of diabetes and major coronary events. I’d like to add that perhaps it’s our high fat, fried, processed sugar foods that are making us fat and unhealthy (okay I partake in some of these too, just not everyday!), and not all carbohydrate foods such as pasta!
Pasta is a staple food in Italy, served at both lunch and dinner. And it is indeed a versatile complex carbohydrate food that can add substance to our meals. It’s easy to cook (know how to boil water?), inexpensive, low in fat, and it comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes (just like us). And at about 80 calories per 1/2 cup cooked, it makes a great base food. What do I mean by base food? I’m suggesting that we use a small amount of pasta as the foundation or base of our meal to which we add other healthy foods such as vegetables, lean chicken or fish. This is what my grandparents and family did when I was growing up and this is how I ate during my trip to Sicily (and I didn’t gain a pound!!)! This is also similar to what many of us do when we eat rice. I usually recommend that we eat pasta instead of rice, because believe it or not, rice is higher in calories per cup than pasta. Rice has the same 80 calories per 1/3 cup cooked instead of the more generous 1/2 cup we get to eat with pasta. So, is pasta really fattening?
Well, we can compare a 3 1/2 ounce portion (about 3/4-1 cup cooked) topped with tomato sauce to a 3 1/2 ounce piece of “lean” sirloin and the pasta comes out ahead with about 60 calories less, and with a lot less fat. The lean sirloin is about 60-70% fat calories while the pasta dish with a tsp. or so of olive oil in the tomato sauce is about 20% fat calories. So, while both are small portions, we can bulk up our pasta dish by adding lots of veggies so then we’re eating a high volume food dish! My family added vegetables or legumes to pasta. We can also add 3 ounces lean chicken or fish and we’ve got all our nutrients in one big dish. If we use non-fat chicken broth to sauté our veggies, chicken or fish that we add to our 1 1/2 cups cooked pasta per serving, we can have a filling dish for under 400 calories (and we’ll have lots of great energy for our workout out the next day!). I even add 1%-fat cottage cheese or part skim ricotta to my cup of pasta with tomato sauce as a substitute for whole milk ricotta and mozzarella.
Pasta can be added to soups and salads, eaten hot or cold, and as long as we find creative ways of using it as part of a dish, we can satisfy our starch cravings without going overboard. Now that summer is unofficially upon us, there is no better time than to experiment making pasta the base of a dish. I love to grill up lots of veggies and add 1/2 cup of pasta (1/2 cup makes one serving per person) to make a chilled salad for an afternoon lunch, for example. We can also save hundreds of calories eating pasta in a restaurant by ordering all pasta dishes with low fat sauces (marinara/tomato vs. meat or cream sauce) and by ordering an appetizer portion with a salad on a the side (with our vinaigrette on the side too, of course!).
So, do I recommend eating pasta? Yes, just not as much or as often, or prepared with heavy sauces. And if we use pasta as the base of a dish, we can control our portion. Let’s not forget to use low fat cooking methods so we can eat our pasta and lose weight too! My thanks again to Oldways, a Non- Profit Company dedicated to bringing nutrition education to us consumers and for their organizing a learning symposium about the Mediterranean Diet in Sicily.
A little pasta perhaps?
Follow me Junefit every Sunday on Twitter for a new tool taken my book. AND my screensaver program “Focus on the Tools” now available for PC users. It features rotating flashing tools from my program with beautifully photographed healthy salads in the background. There’s even a calendar that shows the month and date! Reinforce healthy eating habits and stay motivated to change while at your computer. Click here for more info http://www.junefit.com/serviceshp.htm
Here’s to no more forbidden foods!
June M. lay M.S.
JuneFit
Junefit is included in Google’s top ranked women’s health resources http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Women’s_Health/Resources/
June is Lifestyle Columnist at www.healthnewsdigest.com/
c) 2010 junefit.com all rights reserved.
Source:
Brunner EJ, et. al., Dietary patterns and 15-y risks of major coronary events, diabetes, and mortality. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 May;87(5):1414-21.
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