Tried and Tasted: Pasta Salads

With the start of summer firmly here, it’s out with the soup and in with the salads for our office lunches. But you won’t find a boring plain green salad here, the WLR Tried and Tasted Team opted for trying out some of the low calorie pasta salads available instead, and h

Table 1: Pasta Salads Compared

Brand	Marks & Spencer, Nutritionally Balance	Marks & Spencer, COU	Asda, GFY	Marks & Spencer, Nutritionally Balance	Weight Watchers
Flavour	Hot Smoked Lochmuir Salmon	Feta Cheese & Slow Roasted Tomatoes	Tuna Pasta Salad	Cherry Tomatoes, Spinach & Pine Nuts	Tomato, Basil & Chicken
Rating	Very Good	Good	Good	Good	Ok
Comments	Our favourite out of the Pasta Salads, with a portion size that leaves your tummy as well as your taste buds satisfied.	A general crowd pleaser and some people’s favourite. We were put off by the small portion but soon found it was perfect as this pasta salad was very filling.	A classic done well, but nothing special. Could have done with more tuna in it. We did like portion size, but this is reflected in the calories	This may not have been a standout favourite for anyone, but we’d all happily eat it if given to us. However watch out for the high fat content	Bit like marmite this one, we either loved it or hated it. However it was the lowest in calories of our pasta salads, and is worth giving it a go.
Appearance	Fantastic looking piece of fish on a bed of pasta, with plenty of green and plenty of sauce too.	Colourful with sauce covering the pasta, looks homemade.	Bit boring looking really, but then it’s tuna pasta, they all look boring.	Spinach is very apparent as is very green, yet still appealing.	Very artificial, rather looks like it came out of a tin.
Smell	We didn’t notice one.	Subtle basil aroma.	Combination of tuna & vinegar.	Strong smell of pesto & pine nuts.	Vinegary
Taste	Ingredients really compliment each other.	Quite mild, but loving the feta cheese.	Thick and creamy tuna goodness.	Disappointingly bland, especially for the calories. Plus after a few mouthfuls become slightly stodgy.	No real substance but vinegary taste.
Texture	Great mixture, although some tasters would have preferred the pasta a little more al dente.	Great mix of textures with firm pasta base.	Not as stodgy as you might have thought, thumbs up from us.	Pine nuts are a winner on the texture front giving it more variety than some pastas	Gooey, with good bits of chicken.
Serving Size	1 Tub/195g	1 Tub/190g	1 Tub/250g	1 Tub/190g	1 Tub/245g
Calories/ serving kcal	295	335	340	350	280
Fat/serving g	12.3	13.3	14.8	16.7	4.7

ere’s what they found:

Table 2: More Low Calorie Pasta Salads Compared

Brand	Sainsbury’s, BGTY	Marks & Spencer, COU
Flavour	Tomato, Basil & Chicken	Tomato, Basil & Chicken
Rating	Ok	Ok
Comments	Too much sauce and not enough flavour was the general consensus, but not bad	A disappointing effort from M&S, this one looked cheap and didn’t taste that much better
Appearance	Colourful with large bits of chicken and plenty of sauce	Huge chunks of chicken, but little sauce makes it look dry and cheap.
Smell	Non-descript	Subtle basil aroma.
Taste	Can’t say it tasted of anything in particular but was nice.	Chicken was somewhat dry, with the sauce and pasta being rather bland.
Texture	With so much sauce made it a bit sloppy.	Dry, rubbery chicken really let this dish down.
Serving Size	1 Tub/195g	1 Tub/330g
Calories/ serving kcal	357	365
Fat/serving g	15.1	8.3

Conclusion

Marks & Spencer get a big round of applause from us, as they are the only supermarket to offer a range of low calorie pasta salad options. We were actually really surprised when we found ourselves struggling to find low calorie salads, which is why we have tasted so many from M&S – we figured they’ve made the effort, so we’d try them!

Bought salads can have a shocking amount of calories in, and even some of our healthier options here are higher than we would have expected so always check the packaging, or get creative in the kitchen and prepare your own.

Guide to Our Ratings:
= Outstanding | = Very Good
= Good | = Ok | = Poor