Check the salt content when buying whole wheat pasta

Whole wheat pasta is supposedly better for me on my restricted diet than regular pasta.

Something to do with complex carbs and simple carbs. I don’t know if I buy it all, but to be safe, I have been eating almost exclusively whole wheat pasta in recent years.

I wrote earlier this week about a weekend my wife and I had in Milwaukee recently. One of our stops was a wonderful, long-time institution in Milwaukee’s Italian-American community, Glorioso’s Italian Market. The market has moved to larger quarters than it was in during my long-ago college days there, but it’s still a very special place to find wonderful Italian specialties, like a world of different pastas. You can buy freshly made pasta there as well as a variety of packaged options.

We bought a whole wheat pasta that was made there and a packaged brand I hadn’t seen before, Garafolo, which comes from Naples, the area my ancestors also came from. Comparing the salt content in the two provided a good illustration of the importance of always reading nutrition labels.

The Glorioso linguini we bought had 470 mgs of sodium in three ounces, while the Garofolo had only 30 mgs of sodium in the same three ounces. That’s a stunning difference, isn’t it? When we made the Glorioso’s, I went over my salt intake limit for the day. Not so with the Garofolo.

Salt-free whole wheat pasta also is available, I buy the Mueller’s brand with no salt. But I’m recommending Garofolo now too, I thoroughly enjoyed it with my home-made, low-salt gravy (or do you call it sauce) and turkey meatballs.
John