• Choosing the Healthiest Foods for Your Family

    Welcome! I am a mom of a busy 8 year old and an adventurous 6 year old. I also happen to work for a great company called NuVal. NuVal is a nutritional scoring system that rates foods on a scale of 1-100, based on how nutritious they are. We are implementing NuVal in grocery stores around the country.

    NuVal may not be in your area yet. But I see the scores while they are "hot off the press" and because of that I am able to make better decisions about what to feed my family.

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  • Disclaimer

    I am not a registered dietitian. I am just a mom who happens to work for NuVal. I am also an AFAA-certified Group Exercise Instructor. NuVal is a system designed to lead customers to the most nutritious food choices. It is not a diet or weight-loss plan. Before starting a diet, you should always consult your personal physician. The opinions expressed in this blog are the opinions of the writer and not the opinions of NuVal LLC.

Trade-Up Tuesday: Pasta Dinner

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 71 comments

Posted in: Barilla Plus, Dreamfield's, Trade-Up Tuesday

Tags: , , ,