You can make pasta from many different ingredients. Different ingredients bring different nutrients to your diet. Let us take a look at different types of pasta and their pros and cons.
Whole-Wheat Pasta:
You make whole-wheat pasta with flour that includes the bran, endosperm, and germ of the grain. As a result, it is high in fibre, vitamins, and minerals. This helps you feel fuller longer and minimizes a blood sugar spike. One cup of cooked whole-wheat pasta also has slightly over 8g of protein.
Chickpea Pasta:
Made from chickpea flour and water, this gluten free pasta has the same health benefits as a can of chickpeas. It is loaded with fibre, folate, magnesium, and potassium. It has 15% of your daily requirements of iron and provides 12g of complete protein.
Legume-Based Pasta:
This pasta can come in different varieties including black bean, yellow pea, and lentils. Depending on what you choose, the taste will differ but all are high in fibre and protein. They are also a good source of iron.
Soba Noodle:
You make soba noodles from buckwheat. Buckwheat is not a wheat; it is actually a seed and is gluten free. Some buckwheat products also has wheat to help improve texture. Soba noodles are higher in fibre than white pasta.
Rice Noodle:
You make rice noodles from white or brown rice and are gluten free. They offer 3g of protein, less than 1g of fat, and 42g of carbs per cooked cup. This is very similar to traditional white wheat pasta but rice noodles also have selenium and manganese.
Quinoa Pasta:
Technically a seed, quinoa pasta is a gluten-free option packed with protein and fibre. Most quinoa pastas also has other flours including corn or brown rice flours. This adds texture but results in a lower fibre and protein content.
Vegetable Noodles:
You can cut vegetables into ribbons or long strands and use them the same way as other noodles. They add other nutrients to your meal but they might not fill you up as well as other pastas. Mixing them with whole-wheat pasta is a great solution for this. One cup of zucchini pasta has 1/3 of your daily requirement of vitamin C, and it has a good amount of folate and B vitamins. Butternut squash noodles have vitamin A and hearts of palm noodles have B6, potassium, and vitamin C.
