A short video by JJ Virgin explaining how to enjoy noodle dishes while minimizing blood-sugar spikes and belly fat. She recommends alternative pastas (quinoa—Andean Dreams, red lentil, black bean, shirataki) and vegetable-based noodles (spaghetti squash, spiralized zucchini and butternut), gives practical tips (cook al dente; mix pasta with extra vegetables at ~1/2 cup pasta to 1 cup vegetables), and encourages involving children in spiralizing.
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Hey, it's J.J. virgin, author of the New York Times bestsellers the Virgin Diet, the Virgin Diet Cookbook, and Sugar Impact Diet. And you know what I hear all the time? I want my noodles just like that, too. Just like that. And here's the deal. You can still have your noodles, okay? You're not going to have the big gluteny noodles that crank up your blood sugar and make you store more waste fat. You don't want more belly fat, right? But you can have your noodles and lose your belly fat, too. You intrigued? Interested? Here's what you can have. So first off, there are a couple of alternatives that you may not know about. You probably heard of quinoa pasta, and I want to do a big shout out here for the only quinoa pasta. You should buy Andean Dreams, because you know why? The other ones have corn in them. And corn is absolutely a no, no on both the Sugar Impact Diet and the virgin diet because it's going to kick up your blood sugar. And by the way, corn has gluten, too. So get quinoa pasta. Other amazing options that I'm super fond of. Red lentil pasta and black bean pasta. So great options there. But here's a little trick. Al dente. That's all I need to say. Because if you don't al dente these noodles, you get like a noodle clump, and it's just. It's not good. Now another option are shirataki noodles, okay? So these are kind of fun to play with. Great. And I have in the Sugar Impact Diet cookbook, I have a great chicken. Oops. Noodle soup that you can use these in. So they're interesting. They are like, almost no calories, these little babies. So they come in a couple different things. They even come in a rice style. But if you're looking to kind of go further with this, you can go to squash. Now, squash is one of my most favorite foods. I think it's like the ultimate great hidden secret out there. It's got great nutrients, very low sugar impact, lots of fiber. And so you can do spaghetti squash, bake it, and then strip it, and it's just like pasta. Well, close. Or you can do my favorite thing of all using the spiralizer. You can do butternut squash, you can do zucchini squash. Now, here's the deal with this. Zucchini squash is one of those dirty dozen on the environmental working group. So you want to make sure that you are getting it organic, all right? But here is a spiralizer. This is super Cool. Super inexpensive, low tech. And I'm going to show you how to make noodles. But you can do a bunch of fun things. And by the way, if you're trying to get your kids. Kids to eat healthier, this is sort of like adult play dough. You know, it's all. It's totally fun. Get your kids to play with this. It's going to make them want to eat their zucchini or butternut squash noodles because they made them. One of the easiest ways to get your kids to eat healthier is involve them. All right, so we're going to start with the zucchini. Got to really cut this straight though, right? Start with the zucchini. I'm sticking it on. There's a little. A little prongy thing that I'm sticking it into. And then I'm going to smash this part in. And then here's all you do. Watch how easy this is. There you go. I know you're mesmerized here. This is kind of like shock and awe. Okay, so let's just look at this. How cool is this? You can wow your friends. You can make amazing food with a spiralizer. Inexpensive, healthy. So even if you want to do pasta and you want to do noodles, what I say is do a mix. Because one of my rules of thumb is if you are going to do any kind of, say, quinoa, lentil, black bean pasta, mix it one half cup of pasta to a cup of vegetables. Always double up the veggies for the pasta. So. So you can always do some pasta noodles mixed in with, say, some red lentil noodles. How awesome. And in the Sugar Impact diet cookbook, I have this amazing raw butternut squash pappardelle with garlic and extra virgin olive oil. You got to try that too. So if you have been sitting there going, how am I going to have my noodles? Right? You can actually have your cake and eat it here too. Here. Well, not your cake, your noodles. So again, it's pasta Andean dreams. Quinoa, red lentil, black bean by Tolerant Foods, Shirataki noodles. Or go for the squashes. Spaghetti squash, zucchini squash, butternut squash, and get yourself one of these spiralizers. These are so much fun. And if you got kids, involve them too. And now you can have your noodles. So I want to hear some great recipes. Share them on my Facebook fan page.
