People may not realize this but traditional pasta like spaghetti contains an enormous amount of calories, both from the pasta itself and the sauce. Fortunately, there is a healthy, low-calorie alternative, albeit a bit more expensive. Below is a comparison of traditional to healthy pasta. First, we’ll start with healthy pasta which uses HealthyNoodles available at Costco.
tldr;
HealthyNoodles-based Pasta
This pasta comes precooked. Since one serving is a ridiculously small amount, let’s say we make 4 servings (452 grams, 120 calories).
For the sauce, we’ll make our own using tomato sauce from Target.
I find that one 18oz can is a good amount for the amount of pasta above. The sauce comes with some spices but we can add more like Italian seasoning, oregano, etc. There are many recipes online for making pasta sauces from tomato sauce. One can (427 grams) of this sauce has 105 calories.
Traditional Pasta
The calories listed on this package is for dry spaghetti. To compare with HealthyNoodles above, we want the calories for cooked spaghetti having a weight of 452 grams. According to Yazio, that amount is 714 calories.
Now, for the sauce, let’s go with Raos marinara, which is a very popular sauce available at Costco.
125 grams of this sauce has 90 calories. Therefore, 427 grams contains 307 calories.
Comparison
Now that we have our values, let’s compare the total calories from each type of pasta.
| Traditional Pasta | Healthy Pasta | |
|---|---|---|
| Noodles | 714 | 120 |
| Sauce | 427 | 105 |
| Total Calories | 1141 | 225 |
Conclusion
For the amount specified above, Healthy pasta is 916 calories LESS than the calories in traditional pasta. That’s 80% less calories!