Dear Healthy Mom:
I just found a green pasta in kid friendly shapes and it says in has spinach and zucchini in it. Is this like the ultimate in healthy kid food or am I kidding myself?!
—Healthy Mom Rachel
Dear Rachel:
The good news is that you’re not entirely kidding yourself. Let’s look at one brand: Barilla’s zucchini and spinach mini wheels. If you look at the ingredients, it lists zucchini and spinach puree as main ingredients. And if you look at the nutritional breakdown, this specific pasta contains higher levels of key B vitamins like thiamine, which help the heart and nervous system, and folate, which protects against certain cancers. So this is good news of course. But if you read on the side of the box it says “this package is made with the puree of 1 zucchini and 1/2 cup of spinach.” That’s the entire box!! So unless your child is eating the entire box of pasta, which is roughly 7 servings (and I wouldn’t recommend it) then there aren’t enough vegetables in it to really matter. My other gripe is that it doesn’t get your kids actually eating vegetables, which in the end is what you want. You want them to see spinach and not run for cover.
But not to be a negative nelly, I do like that the pasta is green. I love green. Green foods are the most highly nutritious (think plants and leafy greens) so getting kids used to eating green things never hurts. I actually made this pasta for my own kids and when it was al dente I noticed that the pasta water was green which means that some of the nutrients leached out into the water. Now you could drink the water to get all the goodness back, but blech. Ultimately, the pasta tasted good and my kids ate it without complaining. Real mom, real solution.
Warmly,
Stephanie
