Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 07:01 AM
Welcome to Trade Up Tuesday! Every Tuesday I blog about a trade up I’ve made and I give away some of my favorite products to one lucky Commenter. Today, in the spirit of easy summer cooking, I’m giving away the fixings for an easy pasta dinner.
Pasta and pasta sauce are definitely two categories that I’ve made Trade Ups in. Before I learned about NuVal, I was most likely to buy whatever pasta was on sale. I now know that the scores for most of those plain pastas hover around a 61. That’s not a bad score, but once I started working for NuVal, I learned that there are several pastas with much, much better scores. Like these three:
Barilla Plus Thin Spaghetti: 91
Dreamfields Linguini: 87
Hodgson Mill Spaghetti: 91
After trying them out, I was amazed that I did not have to give up taste for better nutrition. My kids love them too, so I feel great on those nights when all we have time for is boiling up a quick pot of spaghetti.
Likewise, before I started working for NuVal, my Go To sauce was Classico. While there are some varieties of Classico that have fantastic scores, the highest scoring selections (like Spicy Red Pepper, Score: 68) are a little too spicy for my kids’ taste. And the Classico brand that my kids do like (Tomato & Basil), only scores a 43. My Go To Sauce these days is Pastene The Chateau Marinara Sauce with a NuVal score of 66. Everyone in the family loves it, so it’s worth the $4.99 price tag at our local Stop & Shop.
Today’s GiveAway
One lucky commenter will win The Chateau pasta sauce and the 3 boxes of pasta that you see in the picture above. Just leave a comment below answering the following question:
What food or product are you willing to pay more for because it has better nutrition?
I will choose one winner at random at 7 am EDT on Wednesday. Good Luck!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Barilla Plus, Dreamfield's, Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: Pasta, sauce
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 06:45 AM
Welcome to Trade-Up Tuesday – a weekly feature on my new blog where I fill you in on one of my trade-ups and ask you to tell me how you’re trading up for better nutrition.
This week, I introduce you to Barilla Plus Multi-Grain Pasta, which gets an amazing NuVal score of 91. That’s incredible when you realize that the median NuVal score for pasta (half are above, half are below) is a 52. For example, Prince Spaghetti gets a 49. Now, let me just admit right here that it took me some time to try out Barilla Plus. I had tried some whole wheat pastas in the past and they just didn’t do it for me. Also, since I was so used to thinking about foods in terms of calories & fat alone (and not in terms of total nutrition), I figured I would just stick with regular old pasta.
I have two people to thank for finally making the switch. First, I remember having dinner with our friends, Pete and Heather, last winter. Heather is a fabulous cook and is known for sneaking vegetables into some of her kids’ favorites. Pete is a super-healthy long-distance runner who posts Lance Armstrong-like times during marathons. Pete is a huge fan of NuVal and he chooses some very high-scoring foods. While out for this dinner, he said to me, “So, I assume you’re eating Barilla Plus.” Well, I wasn’t. And I felt a little guilty about it. I mean, I worked for NuVal and I was learning all this great new information about different foods, but I wasn’t “living” NuVal.
Soon after, I met Shari Steinbach, MS, RD, Healthy Living Manager for Meijer supermarkets.
We were conducting webinars together, training sessions for all of the store associates at Meijer, who would soon be implementing NuVal. She mentioned Barilla Plus, it’s high score and also offered up that it tasted just like regular pasta. It was enough to make me try it. And I’ve never gone back.
Today’s GiveAway
Today, I’m giving away my Barilla Pasta Trade-Up Package – which comes complete with a red colander and a NuVal water bottle. To enter, just leave a comment and tell me about a trade up you’ve made since learning about NuVal. And if you haven’t traded up yet, check out www.NuVal.com and find a trade up you’d like to make. The contest closes at 11:59 pm November 24th. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Barilla Plus, Pasta, Trade-Up Tuesday
Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:38 AM
After my blogpost about My Top Ten Favorite Foods, I thought it would be fun to blog about my kids’ Top Ten Foods. I wanted their list to really come from them, so I pulled out my flipchart from Staples that we sometimes use to draw big pictures, put it in the living room, and had a brainstorming session with my 6-year-old and 4-year-old. They thought that this was pretty cool. I took a picture to prove to my readers that this really is THEIR list. Notice the wrinkled paper and the kindergarten and pre-school penmanship. We were too tired to bring the easel up from the basement and we propped the flipchart up on the couch, so you can see that the the handwriting is quite slanted.
So, I asked my kids questions like, “If you could eat a food every day, what would it be?” I was surprised to see that their list was so healthy! I truly expected Cheetos, Kit Kats and cotton candy ice cream to make the list since they beg for these items at our Pool Club’s snack bar. Maybe they chose real foods because we were in our own house? Like most grown-ups, they tend to eat well at home and not so well when we are at a restaurant, vending machine, convenience store, etc. We took turns (of course!) with this list, so my six-year-old son chose the odd numbered items and my four-year-old daughter, the even.
1. Carrots
How excited was I that this healthy veggie which scores a 99 on the NuVal scale was the first thing out of my son’s mouth! I buy the smallest baby carrots I can find for the kids because they are not choking hazards. Sometimes, during the school year, I splurge on the small baby carrots that are pre-packaged.
2. Spaghetti
This was when I knew that my daughter was taking this exercise very seriously. Spaghetti is definitely her favorite food and she loves to eat it just like the dogs do in Lady and the Tramp. Now that I know the NuVal scores, we eat Barilla Plus Pasta Spaghetti Multi-Grain at home because it scores a 91. I had tried whole grain pastas years ago and did not like them, but this one tastes just like regular spaghetti. It’s a great alternative when you realize that Prince Spaghetti gets a 49.
3. Apple Slices
These get a 96 and they make a great accompaniment to a sandwich. When you can get your kids to eat something that gets a 96, why would you ever give them chips?
4. Pancakes
Now my daughter must have been thinking that by putting something on this list, we could get is back in our household because we stopped buying Aunt Jemima Frozen Mini Pancakes when I found out that they score a 6! This same child loves Quaker Old Fashioned Oatmeal which scores a 57, so I make it in large quantities and reheat leftovers for a quick hot breakfast.
5. Cinnamon Toast Crunch
My son begged for this cereal last week because Ice Age 3 Return of the Dinosaurs was on the box. We were shopping in Roche Brothers at the time and they do not have NuVal yet (although I wish they would get it), so I wasn’t exactly sure of the score, but I was in no mood for a melt-down in the cereal aisle, so I relented. I got home and looked it up and found out that it gets a 27, which is not bad when you consider that the median score for cereal is a 25. The key would be to get my son to switch to Cinnamon Toast Crunch with 75% reduced sugar because it scores a 40. That is even better than Cheerios (one of the best scoring Children’s cereals at a 34). The question is: Does the 75% reduced sugar have Ice Age 3 on the box? I hope so.
6. Ice Cream Sandwiches
My daughter, who does not like chocolate (crazy!), loves Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches. They score a 2. She also loves plain vanilla ice cream. As I discussed in my I Scream post, Breyer’s Extra Creamy Vanilla ice cream scores a 45. I will work on migrating her over to that choice. “Sorry, honey. The store was all sold out of ice cream sandwiches.” That will only work when I get to go grocery shopping alone – which is like a vacation!
7. Pineapple
Another award-winning pick from my son. Fresh pineapple gets a 99. The canned versions only score a 25. So, while it is more expensive and a huge pain to cut up, I buy the fresh. I admit there are weeks that it sits on the counter and the leaves get all dried out and it starts to grow a little mold on the bottom and then I feel guilty that I blew $4 on a fresh pineapple. But actually that is usually when it tastes the best, so it works in our busy house.
8. Orange Juice
This surprisingly healthy shout-out came from my daughter, Miss Spaghetti-Pancakes-and-Ice Cream. As I mentioned in Keeping Kids Hydrated – Guiltfree, Tropicana 50 Pulp-Free with Calcium scores a fabulous 81. That is amazing when you compare it to Minute Maid Orange Juice Pulp-Free which scores a 30. Before I knew about Trop 50, we were buying our juice from our milk man because I’m on this glass bottle kick right now. Sorry Milk Man! As I mentioned in My Top Ten Favorite Foods, be sure to buy the one with added calcium and Vitamin D, because the other one scores much lower.
9. Plums
My son must have thought there was a prize at the end of this because his last choice scored a 99 also. My colleague and friend is a dad of 2 and he has a “fruit before anything else at breakfast” rule in his house. I liked that, so I started giving the kids cut up plums or peaches with little tiny seafood forks that came with my everyday flatware (what else are you going to do with those?) at breakfast time. It’s a great way to squeeze in another fruit. I put the plums in paper bags until they get nice and ripe.
10. Soup
And on the hottest day of the year, my daughter chooses soup! She has always been a big fan of this hot and salty favorite. We love to sing the old Tom Jones favorite, “She’s a Lady” when she drinks the remaining broth right out of the bowl. She’s such a class act, my four-year-old. Unfortunately, I don’t have any scores on soup as of yet because NuVal is scoring that this fall. It will be interesting to see how they do. It was also interesting to read this morning that Campbell’s will be removing 25% of sodium from soups. Maybe they heard about NuVal?
Try this with your kids and see what they choose. I’d love to see your lists in the comments!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Apples, Barilla Plus, Breyer's Ice Cream, Carrots, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Ice Cream Sandwiches, Orange Juice, Pancakes, Pineapple, Plums, Quaker Oats, Soup, Spaghetti, Top Ten (Kids), Trop 50
