We can incorporate many foods to our diet, something that will depend on our goals, to maintain, lose weight or gain it, but one of the most common and popular foods is pasta.
However, many people consider that pasta can end up being fattening in large proportions, but now scientists come to tell us that we are facing one of the best foods we have available, and it is a balance of all the nutrients what do we need.
This has been commented by an Australian food scientist who has rejected any criticism that pasta is an unhealthy food.
These nutrient intake recommendations are based on per body size, gender and physical activity, notes Emma Becketta professor of food science at Newcastle University, in The Conversation.
“But you may not realize that there are also recommendations for the macronutrient profile, or types of foods, that supply this energy,” she says.
He comments that the pasta is “high in carbohydrates with around 38g on average per cup of cooked noodles, along with 0.6g of fat and 7.7g of protein.”
Recommendations that you should follow
The food scientist recommends that “humans should get about 45-65% of their energy from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat and 10-30% from protein.”
So he recommends eating between “1.2 and 6.5 times more carbohydrates than protein in a day since each gram of protein has the same amount of energy as 1 g of carbohydrates.”
He adds that “the ratio of carbohydrates to protein in the pasta is 38 g to 7.7 g, which equates to a 5:1 ratio, well within the acceptable range of macronutrient distribution.”
But pasta has much more, and yet “a cup of cooked pasta has about a quarter of the recommended daily intake of vitamins B1 and B9, half of the recommended intake of selenium and 10% of iron needs” .
The good thing about pasta, he adds, is that it can also be eaten alongside other foods such as garnishes, making it an excellent source for other nutrients as well.
