Say What?: Pasta... in a Bread Bowl?

Behold the latest creation from Domino's Pizza -- penne pasta entrees... served in a bread bowl!

As a matter of fact, the chain claims their "pasta is so good, you'll devour the bowl."

Not too surprisingly, calorie information is yet to be posted, and the four calls I made to their corporate headquarters proved unsuccessful.

It doesn't take many brain cells, though, to figure out that items like chicken carbonara, Italian sausage marinara, chicken alfredo, pasta primavera, and three cheese mac-n-cheese nestled inside a thick round piece of bread is far from a "light" option.

I'm willing to bet we are dealing with 4-figure calorie values. As soon as the reveal occurs, I will post it on Small Bites.

In the meantime, I'll meditate and see if I can come up with the answer to: "What higher-up at Domino's passionately believes Americans are clamoring for pasta in a bread bowl?"

You Ask, I Answer: Pasta

I've heard so many different things about pasta from a nutritional standpoint.

Is pasta from Italy enriched with vitamins and minerals [like it is in the United States]?

Is pasta cooked al dente better for you because it digests slower?

Some say [pasta] is no better than white refined bread, but others say differently?

What's the deal?

-- Carrie Watson
(via the blog)

What a great trilogy of questions! Let's taken them one by one.

White flour products in the United States are enriched with nutrients lost in the milling process (niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, and iron) as a result of The Federal Enrichment Act of 1942.

In the United States, all white flour products are also fortified with folate.

Some countries have similar laws (in Argentina, the same nutrients are added back to flour, whereas in England white flour must be enriched with these nutrients AND fortified with calcium), but Italy is not one of them.

From a nutritional standpoint, cooking pasta al dente is recommended over mushy consistencies since the "al dente" texture has a lower glycemic index (meaning it does not spike blood glucose levels quite as much.)

However, remember that the glycemic load of a pasta meal is ultimately determined by what else you are eating with your pasta.

If, for example, your pasta dinner contains some protein, fat, and fiber (i.e.: whole wheat pasta with meatballs and parmesan cheese), those additional components will help slow down digestion and lessen the sharp spike in blood sugar levels.

As far as white bread and pasta made with refined flour are concerned -- yes, they are basically identical from a nutritional standpoint (the main exception being that one ounce of bread has roughly 150 to 200 milligrams of sodium, while most dry pasta is sodium-free.)

It's not that white bread and pasta are inherently unhealthy, but rather that, compared to whole wheat varieties, they are nutritionally inferior.

You Ask, I Answer: Healthier Comfort Foods

As it becomes colder, I tend to crave high-calorie comfort foods like macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, creamy soups, and cakes.

Can you suggest some nutritious ways of making them?

-- Sarah S.
Buffalo, NY

Absolutely. The key is to recreate these dishes in healthier, lower-calorie ways.

When it comes to mac and cheese, try whole wheat pasta. The higher fiber content will help you feel fuller faster.

If you find the change too sudden, make your dish half whole wheat pasta and half regular pasta.

When making the cheese sauce, use 1% milk, rather than whole. Also, cut the amount of butter asked for in the recipe by half.

To give the sauce extra thickness, add some cornstarch.

I also suggest using reduced-fat cheddar cheese (I highly recommend the Cabot brand) and then sprinkling some parmesan cheese at the end for extra taste that doesn't add too many calories.

When all is said and done, you will have saved yourself hundreds of calories and quite a bit of saturated fat. Best part? Your tastebuds will be just as pleased.

For homemade mashed potatoes, leave the skins on. Again, this provides a boost of fiber.

Then, replace the butter and milk in the recipe with olive oil (replace the suggested amount of butter with half as much olive oil.)

I have also made some delicious mashed potatoes by substituting whole milk with either 1% milk, plain soy milk, or unsweetened soy milk.

For creamy, lower-calorie soups, I suggest using corn starch or stale French bread as a thickener.

Using stale bread in this context is quite foreign to people in the United States, but very common in many European countries.

This will give soups hearty volume without tacking on saturated fat or an abundance of calories.

Another tip? Try a touch of Silk soy creamer (in its original flavor.)

And so we come to cake.

The best advice I can give you there is never to have an entire cake (or even half of one) sitting in your kitchen counter. It's too easy to cut a tiny slice, followed by another, and another, and another.

When it comes to choices, though, opt for a lower-calorie cake like angel's food cake first.

Top it off with the fresh fruit of your choice and up to 4 tablespoons of Reddi Whip (that adds, at most, 30 calories and 1 gram of sugar) and you have a slice of cake -- with fixins! -- that clocks in at less than 250 calories!

Hope this helps.

You Ask, I Answer: Orzo

Is orzo a whole grain?

-- Cara Montello
(City withheld), NV

If you lived in Italy and asked me this question, I would answer "yes," since "orzo" is the Italian term for barley.

What is known as orzo in the United States, though, is basically pasta made from refined flour. For all intents and purposes, it is like eating standard spaghetti noodles.

As the accompanying picture shows, orzo pasta looks like large grains of barley, hence the name.

Mac and Cheese Grows (And Shapes!) Up

After years of being labeled an unhealthy kids' food, mac and cheese is receiving a glamorous, adult-friendly makeover from two fairly new companies -- Road's End Organics and Fiber Gourmet.

Road's End Organics offers a delectable vegan and organic whole wheat elbow macaroni "Mac and Chreese" (yes, that is 'cheese' with an extra 'r') that is also free of soy and nuts.

The sauce gets most of its flavor from nutritional yeast, a popular vegan alternative to cheese.

The best part? Each serving (half the box) adds up to:

340 calories
0 grams of saturated fat
400 milligrams of sodium
8 grams of fiber
14 grams of protein
25% of the Vitamin B12 Daily Value (I mention this since we are referring to a vegan product)

This passed not only my taste test with flying colors, but also those of traditional Mac 'n Cheese eaters (some of which asked me, "Are you SURE this isn't real cheese?")

That is quite a feat, considering I used unsweetened soymilk as a base for the "cheese" sauce. If you are not of the vegan persuasion, you can certainly use cow's milk if you so choose -- preferably skim or 2%.

Fiber Gourmet meanwhile, is keeping the dairy in mac and cheese but adding fiber in plentiful amounts.

One serving (1 cup) of their new kosher-friendly, free-of-artificial-colors Mac and Cheese product contains a whooping 18 grams of fiber!

A few things worth noting:

First of all, the fiber comes from -- yay! -- actual food (modified wheat starch and wheat gluten, to be exact) rather than synthetic dust.

Secondly, the folks at Fiber Gourmet have done an amazing job of creating a high-fiber pasta with top-notch taste and texture.

There isn't the slightest hint of graininess, nor does the pasta quickly congeal into a great big ball of mush like those awful low-carb soy pastas that were the rage for all of eight seconds in 2003. Are we SURE that wasn't really fussilli shaped cardboard?

Because the fiber content is so high, I would recommend having half a cup in one sitting (as a tasty side dish that delivers a reasonable 330 milligrams of sodium, more than respectable 9 grams of fiber, and only 90 calories!), especially if your current diet is not very high in fiber (in which case, too much too soon causes an intestinal revolt).

Also, keep in mind that children's fiber needs are different from adults. For children ages 3 to 16, fiber needs are determined by taking the child's age and adding 5 to it.

Hence, the 18 grams of fiber in each serving is too much for a 9 year old.

With pre-teens, for instance, I would suggest mixing half a cup of Fiber Gourmet's mac and cheese with another half cup of a "regular" variety.

In any case, this is a wonderful way to boost fiber intake in a tasty, low-calorie way.

Mac and cheese. It's not just for kids anymore.

Numbers Game: Answer

Forty percent of adults in the United States consume a grand total of ZERO whole grain servings every day.

Not the most encouraging of statistics.

Although whole grains are increasingly more available, I suspect this has to do with a lack of education and knowledge.

Many people, for instance, think multigrain bread is a whole grain. It's not.

Additionally, the overwhelming majority of new whole grain products come in the shape of sugary cookies or cereals "made with whole grains," which can mean that as little as 5% of the total wheat flour used is whole.

Not the best approach.

If your whole grain consumption isn't up to par, here are some ideas.

-- Whether at home or at a restaurant, opt for brown rice. Kitchen-phobes have no excuse. Many companies now offer brown rice that cooks in 10 minutes in the microwave. Nutritionally, it is equal to regular, longer-cooking varieties.

-- Enjoy whole wheat pasta, like DeCecco whole wheat fusilli (pictured at right). If you are brand new to it, make your dishes with half regular pasta and half whole wheat.

-- Eat whole grain bread (at least 3 grams of fiber per slice and 'whole wheat flour' as the first ingredient).

-- Experiment with alternative grains like quinoa and whole wheat couscous (they cook the exact same way as rice. All you need is a pot and water).

-- Add barley to your soups.

-- Start your morning with plain oatmeal (sweeten it up with fruits; add fiber and protein with walnuts or almonds)

-- Make sure your morning cereal is whole grain (again, look for whole wheat or oat flour as the main ingredient).

-- Snack on popcorn (air pop it or make it at home in a pot with a little bit of olive oil).

-- Make waffles and pancakes with whole grain mixes. If you buy frozen varieties, make sure they are whole grain.

Remember, whole grains offer more health benefits than non-whole grains with extra added fiber.

If you need more assistance, check out the Whole Grains Council's amazing and extensive list of whole grain products. It's the perfect supermarket assistant!

More Numbers, More Problems

As if selecting healthy options at the supermarket didn't already involve sufficient figures and calculations, a curveball has been thrown into the mix -- "grams of whole grains".

When this trend first started in early 2007, I inwardly cringed and hoped for its quick disappearance.

Far from it -- I keep seeing it on more and more products!

It is my suspicion that with whole grains and fiber being the latest hot topics, food manufacturers hope to confuse shoppers looking to increase their fiber intake by boasting about the grams of whole grains in their foods -- two very different concepts.

So, consider this your "advertiser proof" tutorial on whole grains.

Let's start at the beginning.

More specifically, the United States Department of Agriculture food pyramid (which was reborn as MyPyramid in 2005 after Public Relations firm Porter Novellis -- which has also collaborated with McDonald's & Mars Co. -- had its way with it).

According to that food pyramid, healthy adults on a 2,000 calorie diet should consume 6 servings of grains.

The USDA defines a serving of grains as one ounce (28 grams). Remember this tidbit, it will come in handy very shortly.

MyPyramid distinctly calls for half of those 6 grain servings to be whole (i.e: oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat cous cous, barley, etc.), rather than enriched (i.e.: white bread, white rice, etc.)

Strangely, the recommendation isn't "three or more," but simply "three."

This is where it all starts to get confusing.

If one ounce is equal to 28 grams, and we are asked to make three grain servings (AKA three ounces) whole, then it logically follows that our whole grain intake should add up to 84 grams (28 x 3).

Well, not quite.

Look up whole grain serving recommendations, and you'll see a daily suggestion of 48 grams.

Perform some simple math and you figure out that one whole grain serving is equal to 16 grams (48 grams divided by 3 servings a day = 16 grams per serving).

Wait, but isn't a one-ounce serving of grains equal to 28 grams, according to MyPyramid? So shouldn't one ounce of whole grains also be 28 grams?

Yes, but the majority of grain products weighing 28 grams (1 ounce) contain a variety of ingredients; not just flour.

It turns out, in fact, that a single one-ounce grain serving packs in approximately 16 grams of flour.

So, although that entire slice of whole wheat bread clocks in at 28 grams (1 ounce), 16 of those grams are flour.

The rest? A combination of salt, sugars, water, and other miscellaneous ingredients.

Although food labels do not list grams of whole grains, you have two ways of finding this information out.

One is by claims on the packaging (such as the "Now with 5 grams of whole grains per serving!" stated on boxes of Teddy Grahams).

Usually, though, these claims are made by products that sprinkle a little whole wheat flour on top of a product that is virtually refined grains.

Considering that you need at least 48 grams a day, 5 grams is a pretty pathetic figure to bother writing about in such large font.

The other is via the Whole Grains Council stamp (pictured at top left), which specifically lists the grams of whole grains per serving in a product.

Some companies are still using old versions of the stamp, which classified foods as "good" (8 - 15 grams of whole grains per serving) or "excellent" (16 or more grams of whole grains per serving).

I love the Whole Grain Council stamp -- it really separates the real deals from the wannabes.

With it, you can spot the cereals providing almost 48 grams of whole grains in just one serving! Talk about bang for your buck.

By the way, starting this year, the Whole Grains Council is teaming up with restaurants across the country to help you spot whole grain dishes!

What about fiber? How does it tie into all this?

An item high in whole grains is high in fiber, but products high in fiber are not necessarily high in whole grains.

An Atkins chocolate peanut butter bar, for instance, contains a whopping 10 grams of fiber.

Since this is a low-carb bar, you certainly won't find whole wheat flour anywhere on the ingredient list.

So how is this value achieved? Thanks to a polysaccharide known as cellulose.

Keep in mind that while this kind of fiber helps keep things moving, there are specific substactes in whole grains that have been targeted in nutrition research as helpful in reducing the risk of several diseases.

So, how do you put all this together without going insane?

Simple. Try to consume 25 - 30 grams of fiber every day, and make sure you are including at least three servings of whole grains to your day.

You can keep it simple by thinking of each serving as a half cup of oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat cous cous, whole wheat pasta, or one slice of a bread which has "whole [insert grain here] flour" as its first ingredient.

If you're ever lost, look for the Whole Grains Council stamp to guide you.

Whew!

Good-For-You Gourmet

The thought of pasta ultra high in fiber conjures up unpleasant memories of trying chalky soy pasta (AKA hay) for the first time during the 2003 Atkins craze.

These days, all my pasta dishes at home are made with whole wheat varieties.

While the high fiber is a plus (a cup provides a butt-kicking seven grams), I genuinely enjoy the more substantial taste and texture they provide.

Upon first hearing about Fiber Gourmet (a lower-calorie, higher-fiber pasta), I was skeptical.

I was fully prepared to see "isolated soy protein" among the ingredient list.

Color me surprised. No wheat alternatives, no sugar alcohols.

The whole wheat noodles are made of whole wheat flour, modified wheat starch, and wheat gluten.

The standard Fiber Gourmet noodles are comprised of durum semolina flour, modified wheat starch, and wheat gluten.

Niacin, iron, thamine, riboflavin, and folic acid are added as they normally are to non-whole grain products.

A look at the nutrition facts reveals that two ounces of uncooked Fiber Gourmet noodles -- which yield one cup when cooked -- provide:

130 calories
1 gram fat
120 milligrams sodium
20 grams fiber
7 grams protein

Not only are we talking very high fiber, we are also talking lower-calorie (a standard cup of egg noodles provides 210 calories).

Wow!

The back of the bag briefly explains Fiber Gourmet's process:

"Through our patent-pending technology, we are able to add high amounts of dietary fiber, while keeping the same taste and texture of standard pasta."

My hat goes off to the folks at Fiber Gourmet -- their products passed several taste tests.

I figured I should not be the only evaluator, since my interest in, and passion for, nutrition and healthy foods might mentally program me to automatically give high marks to a high-fiber product.

So, I turned to more conventional palates in my social circle. Every single one approved.

Since this is a product very high in fiber, I would not recommend eating two cups in one sitting, particularly if your diet is normally low in fiber.

As great as fiber is, the "too much of a good thing" concept applies.

Apart from gastrointestinal discomfort (particularly, again, if intake suddenly increases), an overload of fiber interferes with the uptake of certain minerals, including calcium and iron.

This is best consumed as a side dish (think no more than one cup when cooked) to accompany a meal. A half cup, for instance, packs in 10 grams of fiber in a mere 60 calorie package.

Alternatively, when making a large batch of conventional pasta, you can throw in some Fiber Gourmet noodles to up the fiber content in a pinch.

Interested? Head over to the company's site to place an order. It's definitely a Small Bites approved purchase.

You can also stop by their blog to catch up on product development and sales updates and read answers to consumers' questions.