Pasta La Vista…

One of the recurring themes of this course, is to revisit the question: “what are staples foods in your diet?”

For the vast majority of North Americans, the answer is pretty simple: breads, pastas, potatoes and cereals. Now while we believe all these foods can have a place in a healthy diet, the reality is that for many of us, the amount we consume is far too much for our current activity levels.

While that’s easy to acknowledge, it’s far more difficult to actually remove these foods from our routine. I guess there’s a reason why they are so easy to make staples in the first place. But as we saw last week, certain vegetables like cauliflower make an excellent substitute for potatoes or even pizza crust.

Think about that for a second: if you ate 1/3 of a cauliflower pizza as your dinner, you’ll only be eating about 600 calories and taking in about 3-4 servings of vegetables at the same time!

spaghetti-squash

Today, we want to bring you another awesome vegetable that will replace a long-time staple: the spaghetti squash.

Let’s run a tale of the tape comparing 1 cup of spaghetti squash to 1 cup of normal spaghetti

Nutrient Spaghetti Squash Wheat Pasta
Calories 42 kcal 221 kcal
Fat 0 g 1 g
Carbs 10 g 43 g
Fiber 2 g 3 g
Protein 1 g 8 g

I think it’s pretty clear that normal wheat pasta provide 5x the amount of calories. Even filling your plate with 3 cups of spaghetti squash provides fewer calories, yet much more fiber than 1 cup of regular pasta.

Based on what we saw yesterday about volumetrics, care to imagine which one of these two is going to keep you full for longer?

If you haven’t yet tried spaghetti squash, we urge you to do so right away. You can boil it, microwave it or if you have time, bake it, which is our preferred method. (see instructions here: how to bake spaghetti squash)

After you have cooked your squash, top with your favourite pasta sauce (complete with extra meat and veggies) for a dynamic meal.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!