Want advanced access to my weekly Chewsday Reviews?

Every Tuesday morning receive the latest Chewsday Review delivered directly to your inbox.

Vetta Smart Fibre Penne Pasta | Chewsday Review

This week I’m back with another pasta review. I’m taking a closer look at Vetta Smart Fibre Penne, to see what makes pasta "smart".

Ingredients

Positives

The fibre content of “Smart Fibre Pasta” is approximately twice the amount of regular penne pasta (depending on the brand). If your child ate the equivalent of ½ a cup of uncooked pasta, this works out to about 2.6g of fibre, which is roughly 20% of a toddler’s and 15% of an older child’s daily fibre recommendations. This is a little less than pulse pasta or chickpea pasta.
Most regular dried pastas are low in salt, regardless of if they’re made with wheat, chickpeas or other pulses, and this is no exception. The sodium content is only 7mg per 100g.
Again, like other regular dried pastas, Vetta pasta contains no added sugar so is low in sugar.
Vetta Smart Fibre Penna costs $2.35 for 500g, which is about the same as other branded pasta (like San Remo), but more expensive than home brands. Vetta Smart Fibre Penne is also about a quarter of the price of San Remo pulse pasta.

Negatives

The texture is only slightly different to regular wheat pasta, making it an easy option for families with food detective toddlers! It’s more similar to regular pasta than pulse pasta, which can take some warming up to.
Whilst pulse pasta has some naturally occurring iron, this fibre enriched version contains no iron. It’s not really a negative of this pasta, but more so a perk of pulse pasta. Another option for pasta containing iron is Bellamy’s Organic pasta (7 months+) which is fortified with iron, but also expensive. I’d be way more excited about this pasta if it had added iron.
This pasta does have less protein compared to pulse pasta, but having said that, most Australian kids get plenty of protein so this isn’t a huge loss. I see there’s now a “Smart Protein Pasta” too, which seems unnecessary!

Marketing

Alternatives

There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with regular pasta, and this is just another option your family might like to try.
Really you can choose whichever pasta you enjoy! If you’re looking for a pasta containing some iron, you could try offering pulse pasta occasionally if you can stomach the cost (and texture) or for babies and young toddlers you could splash out for Bellamy’s Organic iron-fortified pasta.