I (well my boyfriend) was just wondering…
Good question! I donno.
Pasta would be the winner IF it is made with eggs instead of just wheat. Egg noodles?
Send the BF to the store for a package of each 
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Whole grain products like brown rice are generally “better for you nutritionally” than products made with refined flour, like most commercial pastas. White rice and most pasta are roughly the same nutritionally–mostly carbohydrate with some protein. But hey, there are a billion Chinese people and how many Italians? I vote rice.
I vote brown rice as the best of all…of course white rice is a nutrional wasteland.
just thought of something:
where do buckwheat noodles stand on the nutritional scale?
Buckwheat is touted to be highly digestable and that much more nutritious. The high digestability includes that, compared to rice, buckwheat is a significantly less mucous forming. Millet is touted to be even better than rice and buckwheat, because it takes less time and energy to digest and it leaves comparatively no mucous for the intestines to hold and get rid of.
Bah. Universally, rice is meant to be a base for flavor, whether bean cake, fish, veggie, or meat.
Brown rice has too much flavor in and of itself to make a respectable base.
Treat yourself to good basmati rice for everyday use. Or converted rice for special (Cajun and Creole) occasions.
Converted rice has the same nutritional qualities as brown rice…all the goodies are fused into the core of the kernel.
Uke
The question has very little meaning, as it is put here. Nutrition is a complex matter, including all the things in a organism’s diet. Rice is an excellent source of Carbohydrates, with a high proportion of fiber. It normally has several good micronutrients as well, such as B vitamins, and is often recommended because of it’s naturally low fat content. Noodles have much more protein, and more fat, and often a greater amount of micronutrient. Neither is better than the other. You could not survive on either one alone.
Good nutrition is not a list of bad and good foods. Good nutrition usually means avoiding exclusive consumption of one or another type of food. Fat is an essential nutrient. You will die, if you don’t get any fat in your diet. Fat is not bad for you. You will die if you don’t get any salt in your diet. If you have a specific type of coronary/circulatory disease, you can easily get too much salt for your health. Salt is not bad. Salt is simply not needed by the body in any where near the quantities that most Americans eat it. Same thing with fat. A diet of nothing but steamed broccoli would not be good for you. Protein and fats you need would not be available. Broccoli is not bad for you, it is simply that it is not a sufficient food source for all your nutritional needs.
Eat different foods. Choose foods of very wide varieties. Fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes in nearly equal amounts, and a small amount of foods from animal sources, like fish, eggs, meat, milk. Nutritionally, you don’t need candy, cookies, cake, syrup, sugar, and things like that. They are not poisons. They are highly refined sugars, which the body assimilates quickly, and uses before it uses the more complex structures of organic Carbohydrates.
The occasional sweet does not harm you. Habitual replacement of other foods with sweets will do you harm. Your digestive system will change itself to accommodate the high sugar diet. Among other things, that accommodation can include loss of function of the regulatory systems for glucose and glucogen in the blood. Those are serious conditions.
Fat in the diet is another area where Americans are unlikely to be deficient, and very likely to be able to obtain an excess. Fat is not poison, it is highly nutritious, providing very high levels of calories, and many essential micronutrients. Getting too much fat is pretty easy, since it has 2000 calories per pound, and you don’t need much more than 1800 calories a day altogether. Your body can manufacture it’s own fat, although you do need some fat in your diet.
Nutrition is pretty easy. Eat your veggies, don’t eat your desert until you finish your beans. Drink your juice. Drink some water. Have some of Aunt Daisy’s cookies, but don’t make a pig of yourself. You remember this stuff, right?
Tris
Imagine my signature begins five spaces to the right of center.
‘Better?’ That would depend on the person.
Some people can handle rice but not pasta.
Rice is a pure grain. Pasta is a mix of things.
Rice-beer [sake] much better for you than pasta-wine
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl
According to the USDA, plain white rice and plain ol’ pasta seem to be pretty close nutritionally. There are some differences in mineral content and pasta seems to have more protien.
though this does not apply specifically to “nutrition”, whole grain rice has a lower glycemic index than pasta, which means its sugars are absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream, and so it’s less likely to cause that “after dinner drowsy” sensation. Just a thought.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Triskadecamus:
Good nutrition is not a list of bad and good foods. Good nutrition usually means avoiding exclusive consumption of one or another type of food. [Few food sources are] bad for you, it is simply that [none are] sufficient…for all your nutritional needs.
…eat your desert [after your main meal]. You remember this stuff, right?
That good nutrition can’t properly be reduced to a list of good and bad eats is a critically important point! Well put. The reason Americans can remember the stuff about eating desert after the meal is because that’s an American notion. If we’re gonna stick to the Western table dining habits, it may (for digestion) be just as well, however, to generally put desert before the meal. Also, the salad (because of the enzyme activity) may be just as well or better eaten after the meal. Look into the argument and sense that some food items (like tomatoes and apples) are better or most properly eaten alone—as a meal by themselves, for digestion, assimilation, and nutrition. Also, it can at times of illness, be useful to know what grains are more mucous-causing than others and to select those grains which are less mucous-causing. Also, as you get older, you should note that most proteins promote rather indiscriminate growth (to put it simplistically). In other words, once we stop normal physiological growth, we may start feeding pathological growths if you do not lower certain protein consumption. Ummm, if you’re gonna disagree, please do it with insights for our consideration. Also, while rather nonspecific and seemingly simplistic, the general points made here are useful if you look into them.
ASPA, you may have a point about how the order of eating foods affects it’s digestion, and the “proper” order from that standpoint.
However, the injunction to eat dessert after dinner is premised on a different standard, something much simpler. Dessert is sweets, and can be really tasty (to many people, tastier than the rest of the meal). If you eat dessert first, you are more likely to consume a larger serving of dessert, and have less room to eat the meat, veggies, bread, fruits, etc that comprise the majority of nutritional needs. So eating dessert last is to ensure that you eat all the healthier things first, and then if there’s room you eat a small treat.
Logical, eh?
Oh, yah, I know the given logic for eating deserts last. Didn’t mean to confuse it in my shpeal. I started to directly or distinclt address my point (without just giving it), and here I will: Ummm, the thing about eating desert last is based, simply put, on some notion that refined sugars eaten LAST will slow down and maybe halt proper digestion of the meal eaten FIRST. In this sense, the desert would indeed be the best appetizer. Of course our ideas of “deserts” are fundamentally unhealthy anyway. Delicious, though. Absolutely! I’m on my way now!
Regarding aboveposting: I din’t review that for editing, but I think a full reading reveals what the little corrections are. Sorry.
Why are we still hungry three hours after eating Japanese food? Cause of all that rice does stuff to your blood sugar level.
Why don’t Japanese people like american food? Cause three hours later they aren’t hungry anymore 
Why don’t nobody praise ant marmaz cookin?
Cause three teaspoons later they ain’t hungry fir it no mo’.