Bonne Annee, L'Shannah Tovah, Prosit Neujahr, Felice anno nuovo, Feliz Ano Novo, Godt Nyttår, Xin Nian Kuai Le, Sretna Nova godina!

However you say Happy New Year, we wish each of you the best the new year has to offer. May your life be filled with love, joy, hope, challenge, education, and peace. Oh yes, and have a little fun too!

                            

The Breast Cancer Site Each year, 182,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and 43,300 die. One woman in eight either has or will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. In addition, 1,600 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 400 will die this year. The Breast Cancer Site is an online leader in the fight to prevent breast cancer deaths, giving Internet users the daily opportunity to fight breast cancer - at no cost to them, by clicking on the "Fund Free Mammograms" button. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women ages 40 - 55, yet 13 million women over 40 have never had a mammogram.

This might just be the most asked for product review in history. Since Dreamfields Pasta began showing up on grocery store shelves in February of 2004, we've been flooded with emails asking us for the "skinny" on this almost-too-good-to-be-true pasta. But this is no ordinary low carb pasta... nor do they claim it to be. So Low Carb Luxury took its time to make sure it is what it says it is before we were willing to go out on a limb and stamp it with our approval.

Today, we officially do that.

The question of "digestible carbs" (and how Dreamfields arrives at this number) is a tricky one. It's not a simple carbs minus fiber mathematical equasion like most products use. There's a very specific science behind it.

One that we had to do some investigation on our own. This meant long talks with the company, talks with R&D folks, reading studies, and of course, doing our own studies. In point of fact, I was one of the guinea pigs who ate the pasta under controlled circumstances, and then tested my blood glucose response over the course of 1, 2, 4, and 8 hours. My personal results varied somewhat, but most definitely proved this was no ordinary pasta and was not causing a noticeable spike.

This revolution in low carb nutrition means that we can truly enjoy pasta dishes again... from a cool Macaroni Salad to a rich Penne with Alfredo. And make no mistake about it — this is really good pasta. As good as any premium pasta. And we checked that out for ourselves as well. For our review testing, we tried all the varieties of Dreamfields: Spaghetti, Elbows, Penne Rigate and Linguine. But for our comparisons, we stuck with the Penne Rigate for its shape, consistency, and mouthfeel. When testing, all pastas were served with only a butter and olive oil mixture.

For comparison testing, we chose Barilla, Creamette, and Kroger's brand. We also tested against Atkins Low Carb Pasta... in all cases, we used the penne. While about half of our reviewers preferred the Barilla brand to Dreamfields, the other half preferred the Dreamfields. And Dreamfields beat Creamette 5 to 1. It beat the Kroger's 10 to 1 and in all cases, the Atkins pasta lost to Dreamfields. Those are pretty amazing results for a pasta that fits a low carb lifestyle!

Of course, we cooked up some great dishes with it too, since we wanted to try it with a red sauce, a white sauce, and cold in a salad. Dreamfields actually has a better mouthfeel than most pastas that can easily get "waterlogged." It allows rich sauces to blanket it, and it shines with a premium taste, hot or cold.

Dreamfields pasta comes in at 5 grams of digestible carbs (for more on how digestible carbs work, see our article on page 9.) You can find it in the pasta aisle of most grocery stores, or visit their website to find out where it's available in your area.