Healthy pasta?

Can a meal of pasta be ‘healthy’?

The short answer is no.

Any meal with white flour (and white sugar) can’t be healthy.

But we can certainly make it healthier.

Here’s how:

1. Portion control. I make 75g for each child (my children are 12 and 15) and 100g for my husband. (No, I don’t make any for myself!).
2. Have a huge salad on the side. Ideally, this should be eaten before the pasta. The amount should be such that it will fill your stomach as much as the pasta. This will slow down absorption of sugars from the pasta.
3. Use fresh tomatoes for the sauce. If you process them into a slurry with a blender, they don’t need any cooking. They can be just heated through.
4. Use plenty or fresh herbs: basil, oregano, rosemary. Don’t cook them. Just stir into warmed up tomato ‘sauce’.
5. Add lightly sautéed fresh vegetables like corn, capsicum or zucchini to the tomato sauce. Or make vegetables like green beans as a side dish.
6. Use lots of black pepper.
7. Make the tomato sauce in a generous amount of butter. Fats help in absorption of fat-soluble nutrients.
8. Needless to say, all these should be organic, and the butter should come from grass-fed cows.