Most pasta is what I’d consider junk food. That’s not to say I don’t eat it; I eat it recognizing it for what it is.
Ever wonder about “enriched” pasta? “Enriched” bread? “Enriched” flour? The reason it’s been enriched is because it was impoverished during processing.
Flour from nature is ground whole wheat. Not wheat from which the bran has been stripped in order to sell that back to you as bran flakes to keep you regular when you get constipated from eating highly-processed pasta and bread and so forth.
Wheat also loses a vast amount of its nutrition value (i.e. vitamins and minerals) within a couple days of being ground into flour. If it’s not used within that time, therefore, much of its wholesomeness is lost. That’s clearly impractical in our modern food industry, so manufacturers attempt to compensate by “enriching” it (replacing the natural nutritiousness with artificial). But can that really make up for the loss? I’m not convinced. (This is the same debate as whether vitamin supplements can substitute for actual food, nutritionally.)
I’ve been grinding my own flour for several years now. and eat lots of bread, muffins, waffles, cornbread, etc., getting the fiber and nutrients the body needs to function properly. Yes, I still eat the “junk-food” pasta, but I do so seeing it for what it is.
What I have been allowing myself recently is a sandwich/thin bread. They are 100 calories, made from whole wheat (19 grams whole wheat, 5 grams fiber, no corn syrup). If you saw them, you would laugh because it looks like you took a hamburger roll and drove over it till it was flat. I can eat that type of bread with a lean meat and still lose weight. Although I love pasta of every sort, I think I will see it now as an “occasional” treat. By occasional, I mean a few times a year at most. My body just doesn’t seem to appreciate it as much as my taste buds do.
bttt