High Protein Pasta

We (me, my husband, and my children) also eat Barilla Plus. It's "only" 10 grams of protein per serving. We like the taste and texture better than most white and whole wheat pastas. I'm not specifically looking for high protein, but I can't complain, either.

The ingredients in Barilla Plus are semolina, grain and legume flour blend (lentils, chick peas, oats, spelt, barley, egg whites, ground flaxseeds and wheat fiber), niacin, ferrous lactate (iron), thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid -- pretty good IMO.

The ingredients in the Zone pasta look a little questionable to me, and that does seem like an extreme amount of protein.

I agree. It's not any sillier than continuing to monkey with everything artificially. Do we have to keep putting one kind of nutrient into something that is basically a whole different thing altogether? What's wrong with a high fibre source of pasta with lean meat???? Pasta has some protein as it is. If I want to eat additional protein I will eat my pasta with some good organic cheese, beans, meat, or eggs.

60g or 50g works if you add vegetables to it - pasta primavera, or Asian stir-fry type dishes like yakisoba, or make it as a side for a chicken breast. Then again, if you make it as a side for a chicken breast or something like that, you don't need protein pasta, do you?

100g is the serving size when you eat just a plate of pasta, but that is around 57g carb when cooked, for regular pasta. Not a big deal if you are gonna work out, but I wouldn't eat it more than occasionally anyway.

As for this pasta, if it had no soy, I'd buy it.

Buckwheat pasta is also good for you. Lower glycemic load and all that. I tend to buy whole-wheat durum and buckwheat. And occasionally rice noodles cause they are delicious.

I'm not against soy for people not on thyroid medication, but I still think more "normal" forms of soy, such as tofu and edamame, are preferable to isolated soy protein. Isolated soy protein is to soy like maize is to corn kernels, you know.

The Western diet typically has 40% of calories from fat, 50% from carb, and 10% from protein. So it is low in protein, not high in protein, since no health authority recommends less than 20% of calories from protein.

If you consider the "average" to be a fast-food for lunch, muffin or pop tart for breakfast, frozen food for dinner, chips for snacks person, I doubt they are eating too much protein. I mean, protein grams are based on body size, right? It is a minimum 60g for a woman, 70g for a man I believe of normal size, and it wouldn't be too much, even for a woman of normal size and following the traditional "protein will kill you and give you kidney disease" creed, until it got to 100g, if I recall correctly. So someone who is 50lb overweight, like the average person is, and eating that diet, he/she is eating:

31g protein in the big mac meal
5g protein in the pop tart
6g protein in an average pack of potato chips (nobody eats 1 serving.. 3 servings)
30g on a frozen dinner (I used the info for meatloaf with potato, and for steak with potato)
Let's throw in a doughnut eaten at the office - 4g
and also, a giant Starbucks coffee drink, with full fat milk - 13g

It is 89g. For a fat person. Hardly "too much protein".

Add a million calories in regular soda during the day, but no protein, and I think you'd have your average American there.

I think it depends on what you eat...my inlaws definitely don't lack in protein in their diets. Eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, chicken and a salad with baked potato and cottage cheese for lunch, beef of some sort with potatoes and some sort of cooked vegetable for dinner and milk with every meal. But yeah, I think most American diets are probably too high in everything, especially carbs.