The next wave of pasta products boasts a world’s worth of influences and a host of new nutritional benefits, all introduced through ingredients novel to noodles and largely nonexistent in the pasta and prepared pasta meal spaces. Exploring beyond Italian and Asian, product developers have turned to cuisine cultures ranging from Eastern Europe to Turkey to North Africa to bring greater variety, and nutrition, to the humble noodle dish.

Today’s product developers are taking advantage of hundreds of available grain types and formats, from millet, quinoa, teff, and other grasses, seeds, to multiple rice varieties to wheat in forms such as couscous and freekeh.