Healthier tuna noodle casserole with NuVal

I’ve been a big fan of Tina at Carrots ‘N Cake for a long time. She’s got some awesome ideas for healthy meals and also writes for health.com’s Feel Great Weight section. She’s also working for NuVal – a Nutritional Scoring System aimed at making it easier to make healthy choices. She recently asked if I’d be interested in helping spread the word about NuVal and I jumped at the chance.

First, I’ll explain a bit more about  NuVal. The system was developed by an independent panel of nutritional and medical experts. Essentially, they rate food on a score of 1-100 – the higher the Score, the better the nutrition. Simple, right? The great part its that the Scores are printed right on the price labels at the grocery stores. The only things I can see wrong with the Scores are: 1. Not all stores carry the Scores. (You can find a list here, or suggest a store here.) 2. Not all foods have been Scored yet. Obviously that’s a HUGE task to undertake, so I’ll be patient

If your store doesn’t carry scores either, you can find some of them online here. Thankfully, Tina was willing to check on scores for me for the few items I needed for this dish.

When Tina asked if I wanted to do a post about NuVal, I knew I wanted to take something that was normally ‘unhealthy’ and switch it up with higher scored ingredients (and less processed foods) to make it healthier. Tuna noodle casserole was a great option. I didn’t have a family recipe, but most dishes I’d had in the past included tuna, cheese, pasta and some kind of creamy sauce. I found this recipe on recipezaar to use as a comparison for the original dish.

Scores for ingredients in original recipe – remember you want to be as close to 100 as possible!

• Cambell’s Fat-Free Cream of Celery Soup: 25
• Hellmann’s Real Myonnasise: 2
• No Yolks Cholesterol Free Egg White Pasta: 82
• Kraft Natural Cheese Mexican style four cheese: 20

For the healthier version, I chose this recipe below from Clean Eating Magazine. It uses lots of vegetables and cuts out nearly all the cheese.

Scores for ingredients in Clean Eating recipe

• Butternut All Whole Grain 100% Whole Wheat Bread: 30
• Ronzoni Healthy Harvest All Natural Whole Grain Whole Wheat Blend Pasta Wide Noodle Style: 91

The tuna has kind of a wide range of scores depending on ingredients. Obviously, I think choosing the one with less ingredients would be better (I hope!).

• Tuna- starkist chunk light tuna ranges from 53-81.
• Tuna-starkist solid white albacore ranges from 44-62.

Clean Eating tuna noodle casserole

Clean Eating’s Tuna Noodle Casserole

• 2 slices whole-wheat bread
• 8 oz. whole wheat pasta
• olive oil or cooking spray
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 2 cups skim milk
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 6-oz cans tuna packed in water, drained
• 1 cup fresh or frozen peas
• 1 tbsp fresh dill
• t tbsp parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350. Toast bread in oven for 15 minutes or until just browned and crisp. Process bread in food processor to make breadcrumbs. Set aside.

2. Cook pasta according to directions on package.

3. Meanwhile, heat another pan over med-high heat for 2 minutes. Mist with oil or cooking spray and then celery, onions and carrots (if uncooked). Saute for 2 minutes or until onions become translucent. (I’d cook a bit longer as the celery was still very crisp in my dish.)

4. Add oil and flour and whisk briskly. Add milk, whisking in 1/4 cup at a time to create roux. Reduce heat to medium.

5. Whisk in mustard. Then stir in drained pasta, tuna and peas. Add dill and remove from heat.

6. Pour mixture into large casserole dish. Top with bread crumbs and parmesan. Bake for 30 minutes or until browned on top.

OK, so here’s the best part … The old version of tuna noodle casserole packs 641 calories per serving. The new version has only 230 per 1-cup serving. Not too shabby. Granted, this is a dish that was completely changed, but for someone who loved the cheesy goodness of the original tuna casserole, I actually enjoyed the healthier version more than I thought I would. I loved that it added a lot of healthy vegetables and didn’t use a lot of processed products.

So, can you see how NuVal can help you make healthier choices? The pasta is a key example of making a healthier choice – going from a score of 82 to a score of 91. Check out the NuVal site and see where some of your favorite items rank. You might be surprised by the results.

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