Flour power boosters

IT’S a tricky one. You want to add a healthy touch to your diet yet you can’t bear the thought of giving up the food you love. And particularly as autumn draws on the thought of a salad is less than scintillating. The answer is pasta... but not as you know it. It’s pasta with all the texture and taste of Italy’s finest yet with few of the carbs.

Slim Pasta, from health food pioneers Famous Rainbow, is created from organic konjac flour.

The flour, milled from the south east Asian konjac plant, contains glucomannan, rich in soluble fibre, which has been used the Japanese and Chinese for centuries and now is approved by the European Food Safety Authority as a weight loss aid.

The flour is blended with organic oat fibre to create Juroat, a carb alternative that slows down digestion and can keep you happily hunger free for hours.

It’s not simply the contents, it’s the resulting products that whet the appetite. Slim Lunchbox is a range of low-carb, low-fat, low-saturate and medium-salt on-the-go dishes including classics such as arrabbiata with spicy tomato sauce and Mediterranean with tomato.

Juroat is also used to create low-carb but traditional Asian and Indian dishes including chicken tikka masala with rice and vegetable panang curry with noodles. There’s as little as 6g of carbs in each 100g, against 350 in traditional pasta, with as few as 115 calories in a 250g meal.

The meals are gluten-free and low in sugar (safe for coeliacs and diabetics) and free from artificial colours, flavours and preservatives.

And all you need do is pop them in the microwave. They’re great for office lunches, too, as they don’t need to be kept in the fridge. However, should you want to add your own sauces, there are three varieties of Slim Pasta as well as Slim Rice and Slim Noodles. All you need do is drain, rinse and microwave or stir-fry.

A 200g portion of Slim Noodles contains just eight calories.

But you don’t need to be on a diet to appreciate the Slim Pasta range – they’re healthy and great value, starting at £1.99 for a Slim Lunchbox meal.

There’s also a range of Slim Sauces, both savoury (such as Thousand Island and Spicy Garlic) as well as dessert – chocolate and caramel. And all with no more than four calories in a 15ml serving.

If you’re looking to get your diet in hand before the Christmas season, this is a good way to start – keeping yourself trim while not going short on the pasta dinners. INFORMATION: Available from Holland & Barrett or direct from eatwater.co.uk