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The Nutrition of Whole Grain Pasta

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Whole grain pasta is found by a lot of people who try it to be somewhat chewy and grainy. To overcome this potential problem, try eating your whole grain pasta with a more complicated pasta sauce that goes beyond the mundane tomato sauce. On the whole, whole grain pasta is very nutritious for you.

High in Fiber

This characteristic of whole grain pasta should please those of you who are interested in maintaining a healthy digestive system, along with excellent bowel movements. For a helping of half a cup of whole grain pasta, you are already getting 6 grams of fiber. While this is not all that much, it is helpful to you in warding off constipation. Furthermore, it is also essential in making your waste travel through your colon with much better fluidity and efficiency. This, in turn, cleans out your colon to a greater extent, which means that the chances of waste staying in your colon and becoming carcinogenic fall dramatically. With this cleansing of your colon to a greater extent, your chances for getting cancer of the colon also fall.

High in Carbohydrates

All types of pasta are high in carbohydrates, and this is mainly due to the content of flour in the pasta noodles. So, when it comes to carbohydrates with whole grain pasta, it is essentially the lesser of evils in that it has less carbohydrates than other kinds of pasta. For a serving of whole grain pasta that comes out to one half of a cup, you are exposing yourself to approximately 35 grams of carbohydrates, which is not ideal (but it is not as bad as it can be with other types of pasta). Depending on where you stand, high carbohydrates can be good, as in the case of athletes who need them for energy, or they can be undesirable if you are on a diet and are looking to lose weight instead of gain it.

Low in Sugar

Whole grain pasta offers as a benefit the characteristic of being low in sugar. A serving size of a half of a cup only gives you 1 gram of sugar. It is beneficial to eat foods that are low in sugar so that you can avoid some of the health problems that eating excessive sugar brings. With this low-sugar type of pasta, you are able to spare yourself the complications of tooth decay and the increased risk of getting diabetes, both of which, directly as well as indirectly, are consequences of eating sugar in excess.

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