Balance of Food

I don't usually spark food trends. I follow them, sure, but I don't start them. An exception has been whole wheat spaghetti. Now whole wheat spaghetti is hip, even accepted in certain circles. But it hasn't been easy to pull away from the white-flour classic. These hybrids that you see in the store are the worst of both worlds. You don't get the fiber you need, and the taste is different than you are used to getting. My success with whole wheat spaghetti has come with a price. You have to eat your way through the initial product launches. I do tend to be a spaghetti-a-holic, so shifting from the classic white-flour was a major step. But at the time, I thought adding more fiber would be a good thing, only if the taste would back it up. The results weren't good for the first few times. It wasn't horrible, but the taste was a little off. I didn't particularly like the only brand I could find at that point. I wanted to keep trying, but I was willing to wait until I found something else. Then stumbling in the "diet" section of the grocery store, I came across Pritikin whole wheat spaghetti. It was not what I had been eating, so I tried it. Much better, I thought. Still, the price was significantly higher than the regular white-flour spaghetti. I also experimented around this time with Dreamfield's. Not quite whole wheat, but close in taste to what I had. Still, I wondered if whole wheat was going to be my future. I liked the Pritikin enough to keep buying it, but I still hadn't made the total transition to whole wheat spaghetti. By the time I had to make the series of life-long changes, I feared spaghetti would be gone for good. But when I realized that if I switched to whole-wheat spaghetti for good, I could keep being a spaghetti-a-holic, but with whole wheat and smaller portions. Unfortuantely, good ol' Pritikin: soon after I started eating it, the brand went away. (This happens a lot to me.) The good news was by then, I found quite a few brands that I liked. The taste of whole-wheat spaghetti is so good that I honestly would rather have the whole wheat brands. And it's great knowing I'm getting increased fiber. And now there's whole grain spaghetti. Not just whole wheat but numerous combinations of grains. So far, the taste of those has been just fine. Perhaps you need a transition. Avoid the whole-wheat blends (part whole wheat, part white flour) you see on the shelf. The transition can be buying one package of whole wheat spaghetti. Oh, one key tip: cook at least 1 minute earlier than the minimum time on the package. Even if you eat the same amount of spaghetti, you will get more fiber. But since you'll be more full by eating whole wheat spaghetti, you might end up eating less. The cost differential has come way down, and if you do eat less, you'll find the costs to be similar. You likely wouldn't make this move unless the taste and costs were similar. When you add in the increased fiber, and heartier taste, whole-grain pasta (whole wheat or otherwise) is a smart way to eat better without too much sacrifice.