Pasta: what about triticum durum?

[tpbeebejr]

I am new here and I just posted my introduction in the Introduce Yourself section, and then my first post (about popcorn).

Being of Italian-American heritage, the hardest part of going wheat-free for me is the loss of pasta. Some paragraphs in Wheat Belly left me with some questions about pasta. On page 34, Dr. Davis says that "Pasta stands apart from other wheat products,..." and then he goes on to discuss the type of wheat, triticum durum, from which most pastas are made. So what's the deal for durum semolina pasta?

Then I see in a table of the glycemic index and glycemic loads of various foods,

http://www.health.harvard.edu/glycemic


compiled from peer-reviewed scientific articles, that it lists a glycemic index of only 32 and a glycemic load of only 15 for 180 grams of "Fettucini, average".


As I said in my "Introduce Yourself" post, I am not looking for a gluten-free pasta substitute, like my father would be because of his celiac disease. It is my understanding that the substitute rice pastas are just as bad or worse when it comes to glycemic load. Can someone shed some light on the pasta story for me? Again, I am interested in both the scientific facts and the anecdotes of our members.


Thanks,
Tom

[Barbara from New Jersey]

Welcome Tom,

All wheat is a grass and should not be eaten.  There are just too many harmful components.  All the other grains fall into the same basic categories and should not be consumed either. Hard wheat, soft wheat, durum, semolina and all the other varieties are include in that category. Carbohydrate value is meaningless if you consider wheat to be unfit for human consumption. 

We all miss pasta and crunchy foods.  But the trade off of better health is a choice that we made and will never go back to eating the delicious but poisonous foods that made us sick.  Your learning curve is just beginning.  Grain Brain by Dr. Perlmutter also lists and discusses what wheat does to your brain. 

[Rita]

There is a student in one of my nutrition classes ( also an older student ), who is Italian and was saying the same thing.  So much of her heritage and culture is around homemade pasta.   I can see how hard that would be.


I usually do spaghetti squash or use a julienne peeler and make a zucchini noodles.   Every now and then we splurge and do a quinoa pasta.