Seems like pasta used to be made out of wheat. Then came gluten-free rice pastas, and raw food zucchini pasta. Now Explore Cuisine has made pasta entirely out of beans. Their organic adzuki bean spaghetti consists of nothing but organic adzuki beans and organic soybeans.

I review a lot of health foods, sometimes terrorizing my husband with them. This time, the box sat out on a table for about a week while I periodically threatened to cook it. Usually I like the healthier versions of foods, while he yearns for regular old wheat pasta. But when I cooked the pasta for lunch today, my husband surprised me by liking it.

Adzuki bean spaghetti doesn’t taste exactly like classic pasta made from wheat. Instead, it has a hearty flavor of its own and an outstanding nutrition profile. One 205-calorie serving of this spaghetti contains 12 grams of fiber and 21 grams of protein. That is way more nutritious than ordinary spaghetti! Plus, you get 29 percent of your daily potassium quota, 10 percent of your calcium and 25 percent of your iron.

Formerly called Explore Asian, Explore Cuisine specializes in vegan, organic, gluten-free, and kosher bean-based pastas. I’d call that a specialty niche. Their intriguing offerings include green lentil lasagna noodles, red lentil penne and edamame and mung bean fettuccine, to name just a few. And to make the deal even sweeter, the company donates 2 percent of its proceeds to the Food to Thrive Foundation, which provides education and farming advancements to the farmers who work with Explore Cuisine.