Is pasta really fattening and unhealthy or is that another silly myth?

Inside: Is pasta fattening? Find out the best ways to eat pasta to keep it healthy.

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“You know pasta is fattening, right?”

That’s what my former client remembers her cousin saying to her decades earlier when, as a young teenager, she reached for a second helping of spaghetti. And that started her fear of pasta and her guilt about eating it.

My client has a love-hate relationship with spaghetti, orechetta, and penne. She loves all types of pasta but hates how she feels about herself when she eats the fattening, unhealthy food.

Is pasta a dieter’s enemy?

Sometimes people are shocked when they learn I eat pasta. It’s processed. It’s nothing but starch. Pasta is fattening. These attributes don’t fit with what they think a registered dietitian nutritionist and diabetes educator should eat. But to this, I say:

Lots of processed foods are wholesome.

Pasta is more than starch. It provides vitamins, minerals, fiber, and even some protein. Importantly, pasta is a vehicle for other wholesome foods like salmon, chicken, and vegetables.

But is pasta fattening? If so, I’d agrue just about every food is fattening – it depends on how much and what else you eat.

Can pasta actually be a health food?

An Italian study made headlines claiming that Americans have had it wrong all along. The researchers find that pasta is good for weight control.

Well, that could make your head spin!

Pasta good … pasta bad.

Pasta makes you slim … pasta makes you fat.

What are you to believe? Is pasta fattening after all?

The Italian study in the journal Nutrition & Diabetes tells me that single foods (including pasta or even broccoli) matter little. The entire eating pattern – in other words, your whole diet – matters a lot.

As a percentage of total calories, pasta was associated with healthier weight status when it was consumed with other traditional foods in a Mediterranean-style diet. It doesn’t suggest that adding a plate of penne to your current diet is a smart idea. Or that eating a bowlful of fettuccini drowning in Alfredo sauce will trim you down.

Main point: Pasta won’t make you gain weight when you enjoy a small serving with other health-boosting foods. Skip the Alfredo sauce. Instead toss your pasta with tomatoes, onions, garlic, and any and all of your favorite vegetables.

If your plate is covered with spaghetti, your pasta serving is fattening.

Before deciding if a food contributes to weight gain, ask yourself these questions.

1. How much of this food am I eating, or how much does it contribute to my total calorie intake?
2. What am I not eating whenever I eat this food?

If you’re not eating a cup of nonstarchy vegetables like broccoli, carrots, and zucchini for a mere 50-ish calories because you’re dipping into the pasta bowl for a second or third time – at about 220 calories per cup – then your overall diet probably needs some tweaking. Trim that pasta serving down and go up, up, up on non-starchy vegetables. If you need a list of the lower-calorie, lower-carb vegetables, I’ve got you covered.

What nutrients are in pasta?

Here’s approximately what you’ll get in a small 1/2 cup serving of regular spaghetti

• 100 calories
• 3 grams of protein
• 20 grams of carbohydrate (includes 1 gram of fiber and no added sugars)
• no sodium
• 10% of the Daily Value for iron
• 30% of the Daily Value for folate, a B vitamin critical for the prevention of neural tube birth defects
• 10 – 35% of the Daily Value for other B vitamins

If you choose whole-grain spaghetti, you’ll up the fiber to about 3 grams per half cup and you’ll get a bit more minerals like magnesium, but your B vitamins and iron will drop. That’s because common white spaghetti is enriched with several nutrients, as required by law.

A third option is Good Wheat pasta, a new brand of white pasta made with flour rich in resistant starch, an important type of fiber. The company sent me samples of Good Wheat pasta, which serves up about 4 grams of fiber per 1/2 cup serving – more than either regular or whole-wheat pasta.

What’s a good serving so pasta isn’t fattening?

By the way, I’ve eaten many meals in Italy that included pasta. Never once was I served a plate or bowl of it. Pasta always came as a side dish.

Your proper serving size depends on a lot of personal factors, including your current weight and blood sugar and your goals for your weight and blood sugar. But here’s a good-enough general answer.

Most people will do well with a serving size of 1/2 – 1 cup of pasta. That rings up about 100 to 200 calories and 20 to 40 grams of carbohydrates. My favorite way to balance a meal is to use the plate method, which I describe here.

With the plate method, you automatically build in both balance and portion control. If you have diabetes or prediabetes, you’ll probably want to stick to no more than a cup of pasta, and the plate method will help you do that. If you don’t have blood sugar concerns and if you aren’t working to keep your weight down, a larger serving might be just fine. However, you’ll still want a balanced plate, so the plate method is good for you too.

Blood sugar tip: It’s not the amount of carbohydrate that you eat from a single food that matters. What your blood sugar cares about and responds to is the total amount of carbohydrate you eat at one time. So if you eat a full cup of pasta at dinner, that’s probably not the meal to eat bread or sweets.

Need a review? Here’s an article about blood sugar basics.

What are good pasta substitutes?

My mantra, of course, is more vegetables, more vegetables, more vegetables!

You’ll find me serving spaghetti sauce over steamed green beans, spaghetti squash, spiralized zucchini or even tucked into a roasted bell pepper.

I also enjoy Explore Cuisine black bean or edamame bean-based pastas, which are uber-loaded with both protein and fiber. If you want a meatless meal, this is an ideal spaghetti because it serves up so much protein. The Barilla brand of chickpea or red lentil pasta is more readily available, but a bit lower in protein and fiber.

Healthy ways to eat pasta

More vegetables, more vegetables, more vegetables.

• Toss with a mishmash of vegetables. I simply sauté mushrooms, onions, cherry tomatoes, chopped asparagus, or whatever I have handy in olive oil and garlic. Delish!
• Chill it. Mix up a pasta salad (with oodles of vegetables, of course). Cold starches like pasta and potatoes give us resistant starches, which are good for blood sugar control, intestinal health, and more.
• Soak up a delicious sauce. Serve pasta under chicken paprikash, Italian-inspired fish, or Veggie-Powered Pasta Sauce with Lentils.
• Right size it. Enjoy a side of spaghetti or a small dish of pasta salad. Don’t make them the main course.
• Cook it al dente. Pasta that’s still a bit firm has a lower glycemic index than well-cooked pasta. Also, it tastes better.

Bottom line

More vegetables, more vegetables, more vegetables. Also, love the food you eat.

And watch your portions.

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