The One Pasta Dish You Should Avoid (Even if it's with Miracle Noodles)

Before divulging, however, what exactly this dish is, let's review a basic nutrition rule....

Even if you're trying to cook healthy and manage your weight, you need dietary fat for your body to conduct basic physiological functions and to thrive energetically. You also need dietary fat to prevent cravings. There's nothing worse than pouring your heart and soul into a recipe, taking all that precious time, and then, within an hour after eating, you're still hungry. 

Chances are high that the number one reason that you're still hungry after cooking a meal is that your recipe lacked enough dietary fat. That's why, we foodie addicts on the Miracle Noodle Team are big fans of cooking with coconut oil. Even though it is comprised of mostly saturated fat, it is a healthy fat, and a healthy saturated fat. 

Fats are only bad if they contain hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated fats; these are trans fats meant to preserve the food in question for several months, or in the case of a Twinkie and other junk foods, even several years. Saturated fats are healthy in moderation as long as they come from all natural sources and aren't cooked to death (like blackened, well-done meats). 

Ok, we've covered the topic of cooking with fats and saturated fats before, but it's an extremely important topic in healthy cooking, so excuse the lecture refresher....

So now that we've established, again, that not all fats are bad, nor created equal, let's examine how you feel after eating certain foods. 

When you cook a dish with olive oil (another healthy fat to cook with, but keep the heat lower), Miracle Noodles, and veggies like asparagus, broccoli and spinach, how do you feel after eating it? Chances are, content, without feeling stuffed. You might even say you feel 'light.' 

Feeling light is a critical element to healthy cooking. You want to make meals that on one hand satisfy you for several hours, thereby eliminating the desire for junk food cravings; on the other hand, you want to prepare meals that don't make you heavy, which brings us to a certain popular dish....

Every time after you've eaten a Chicken Alfredo dish, how do you feel? 

You probably don't feel as light as you do after eating an olive oil-garlic based sauce; you might say you even feel 'heavy.'

There's a reason why they call it 'heavy whipping cream.' 

Sure, a little bit of heavy cream is good in coffee, but when you're at a restaurant, or cooking at home, drenching your dish in a cream sauce is one sure recipe that calls for a nap after the meal. 

If you absolutely love alfredo dishes and want to experiment with just adding a tablespoon of cream, that's fine, just don't drown your dish in it. You don't want to have to call the lifeguard to come rescue the ingredients from drowning in the creamy, heavy sauce. 

The same thing could be said about soup dishes, too. 

In short, the lesson is, if you want to feel light after preparing a meal, take it easy on the cream!