Pasta Salad Lunch

recipe

The trick to keeping the family happy is serving your meals in parts. This allows everyone to make their version of the meal, whether the American favorite or your ultimately skinny version. 

Here is a picture of what you need available on hand to serve the pasta salad lunch: 

  • white pasta spirals
  • ranch dressing
  • fat-free vinaigrette dressing
  • grilled chicken
  • tuna
  • chopped cherry tomatoes
  • broccoli
  • kalamata olives
  • carrots
  • sugar snap peas
  • garbanzos
  • parmesan cheese

We’ve created three plates to reflect how different one meal can look when built with parts.

Meal #1 - Typical Pasta Salad

 

Most people enjoy a white sauce chicken pasta salad. In our example we tossed white pasta spirals with ranch dressing and grilled chicken. 1040 calories, 6g fiber

Meal #2 

 

For a slightly healthier version, we cut down calories using only 2 cups of pasta and adding some veggies - broccoli, cherry tomatoes, and kalamata olives. We switched the dressing to a fat-free vinaigrette and swapped the chicken for tuna. 736 calories, 9g fiber

Meal #3 - Skinny Pasta Salad

Our most slimming pasta salad uses only 1 1/2 cups of pasta, the fat-free vinaigrette and a great helping of broccoli, cherry tomatoes, carrots, sugar snap peas, garbanzos and a mere 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese. 602 calories, 18g fiber

Full Plate Living is a small-step approach with big health outcomes. It's provided as a free service of Ardmore Institute of Health.

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