The healthy invention of the food industry to eat
Nutritionists recommend legume pasta, made from peas, lentils or chickpeas, as a serving comparable to the intake when they are cooked.
Legumes can be eaten just like a plate of Italian pasta. Given the lack of traditional stores selling cooked legumes, or the lack of time to soak and then boil them at home, the food industry has stepped up and invented legume pasta. In this case, the industry is adapting to the demands we, as a society, should place on them to produce good, high-quality products.
To make legume pasta, the industry grinds the legumes, turns them into flour, and then shapes them into the spirals we associate with Italian pasta. So, on supermarket shelves, among the packages of wheat pasta, fresh or dried, you'll find legume pasta: red lentil, chickpea, or pea. Check the label: they're made from 100% legumes.
It's a way to eat legumes, one of the options for including the necessary portions in your weekly intake. Of course, it won't be exactly like eating them cooked, because, in the case of red lentils, don't eat the outer hull, as it's removed to make flour. Without it, you miss out on the fiber that legumes provide. However, legume pasta is much more digestible than the legumes themselves, thanks to the processing used to make it, which is why it's so highly recommended for those with intestinal problems.
Thus, nutritionists, such as Anna Costa and Anna Grífols, consider legume pasta "healthy," and linking this adjective –healthy- The invention of the food industry is historic. And even more so because if we follow the premise that we should prioritize foods as nature provides them, we would rule out legume pasta, since neither the earth nor any tree produces pea flour curls.
Vegetable sauces are preferable
When cooking legume pasta, you can prepare it just like you would Italian pasta. Choose your favorite sauces: pesto, blond pesto, Bolognese, Alfredo, carbonara; just keep a few things in mind: legume pasta provides protein. If you add more protein to the sauce, double the amount per serving. In other words, if you make lentil pasta with Bolognese sauce, you're essentially eating protein with protein. On the other hand, pesto is a great option because you're getting protein with a green sauce made from basil leaves, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese (which, yes, also contains protein, but not as much as Bolognese). Another example: with chickpea pasta, opt for puttanesca sauce, which is more nutritionally rich than ragù. And while puttanesca does contain anchovies, it's similar to the cheese in pesto sauce, which isn't its main ingredient.
Finally, if when you buy packages of legume pasta you see that the package says "pasta with pea protein," beware. You're not buying pasta made entirely from pea flour. In this case, the industry has used the protein from the pea; they haven't simply ground the peas into flour.
Therefore, pasta with pea protein is not comparable to eating a serving of legumes, because the ingredients are wheat flour and added protein. And above all: it wouldn't be a serving comparable to legumes, which were the historical and healthy invention of the food industry.