This Banza pasta review post explains the major benefits that the pasta offers. You will also see my customer review analysis that will tell you how consumers felt about this product. Lastly, I included some recipes you can use with chickpea pasta.
Banza Pasta
Banza pasta differs from other normal pasta in several ways. The most distinguishable difference is the health benefits the chickpea pasta offers.
Health Benefits
In summary, there are three major benefits.
- High protein
- Low carb
- Gluten-free
These characteristics are contrary to the traditional pasta that have lower protein, higher carb, and gluten-rich. Compared to the normal ones, one serving of Banza pasta has:
- 2x the protein
- 3x the fiber
- 1/2 the carb
In addition to these, Banza pasta is Non-GMO and is free from “major food allergens” defined by the FDA. Thanks to these benefits, Banza pasta can be a good alternative for vegetarians or vegans.
Ingredients
As you could guess, the main ingredient is chickpeas – more than 90% of the whole ingredients. The rest include non-GMO tapioca, pea protein, and xanthan gum to bind the checkpea flour together. You can check their nutrition label here. To answer the question you are having now, let me explain about xanthan gum.
That ingredient is extracted by the fermentation of sugar, which is a similar way to product yogurt. Banza’s xanthan gum came from corn without corn protein. Banza explains that the gum ingredient takes up a very small percentage of Banza pasta. But, if you are allergenic to corn, you need to consult with your doctor.
Taste
There is a known pattern among healthy foods. Healthy foods are less tasty compared to their normal versions. Because of the fact, many people give up or sometimes waste what they bought. Does the same rule apply to Banza pasta?
What they claim is the look, feel, and taste are like traditional pasta. Compared to other alternatives such as lentil pasta, quinoa pasta, black bean pasta, edamame pasta, brown rice pasta, and whole wheat pasta, Banza chickpea is the closest to the normal ones.
Recognition
Because of the benefits and the tastes, Banza was featured in TIME Magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2015, the New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, the Today Show, Huffington Post, Good Morning America, and Generations Startup. More importantly, as you will see, many people have shared positive experience with the product.
Online and Offline Stores
You can purchase Banza pasta both online and offline.
- Online Stores: Pasta, Mac, Rice, and Plant-Based Mac pages on Amazon
- Offline Stores: Whole Foods, Target, Sprouts, and Kroger
- Try this Store Locator
Customer Review Analysis
When you consider buying a product or using a service, you will wonder what experiences other buyers had. Investigating the reviews of other users can lead to a better decision, and it is a wise thing to do as a consumer. If people are dissatisfied with it, they will complain about it and won’t recommend it. If they are happy, they will leave positive comments and share their great experiences. If we can compile and analyze those reviews, we can have an assurance about the product or the service.
That’s what I am going to do for you. I used over 1,500 reviews that people left on Amazon. I summarized those data to generate easy-to-understand graphs and charts. Those visuals will allow you to understand the overall sentiments the customers had toward Banza pasta. They are also easy to understand.
Positive Banza Pasta Word Cloud
In a word cloud, some words will appear bigger because those specific words were more frequently used among customers. So, the bigger the more frequent, thus, if those big words are positive, it proves that most of the customers had a positive experience. Have a look at the word cloud of Banza Pasta.
The word cloud above should have given you a good impression of their products. The most frequent word that actual customers used in their reviews was “great”. Other big words are also positive – “starts”, “five”, “good”, “taste”, “delicious”, and many more. Just by looking at the word cloud, we can learn that most of the people were satisfied with Banza products.
Among the words, there are several noteworthy. First, “starts” and “five” are used together in the review titles quite often. That’s because when you don’t put title but grade your review with 5 out of 5 starts, Amazon uses “Five stars” as a default title.
Let’s also talk about “taste”, “tastes”, “texture”, “alternative”, and “substitute”. Let me share some titles that used some of the words to give you a context.
“Great taste and fast cook time”
“Banza actually tastes better than regular pasta”
“Healthy and tastes incredible”
Positive titles used “taste”
There was many positive feedbacks regarding taste. But, as any product cannot satisfy entire customers, there were some people who didn’t like the taste and texture.
“personal thought…I don’t like the taste”
“this product cooked up nicely but it didn’t taste like pasta”
“Looks and feels like a normal pasta, but the taste just is not there”
Negative titles used “taste”
There were some complaints about the taste as above.
“Great tasting wheat pasta substitute”
“Great alternative to flour products”
Positive feedback with “substitute” and “alternative”
Overall, Banza pasta received positive comments from people.
Customer Sentiments
The word cloud tells you what descriptive words people used for the product. There is another angle we can use to understand the Banza customer reviews. That is by categorizing the reviews into a type of 10 sentiments. While I used the review titles for the word cloud above, I used the review contents for the sentiment analysis. The result is the graph below.
I was able to run my sentiment analysis code to find out what specific sentiments people had over Banza pasta. As we could guess from the word cloud, more than half of the review contents were positive. Of course, people shared negative experiences. I haven’t seen any review that is all positive. Despite the negative reviews, overall, people left positive comments on the healthy pasta products.
Banza Pasta Interest Trend
Another type of analysis I often use for a product review is using Google Trend. It is an extremely helpful service by Google that gives you a historical Google search trend. The idea is that if a product or a company can maintain or can increase its search volume over many years, it supports the quality of the product. If a product is bad, people won’t show their interest and eventually will never search for the product anymore. Then, how is the trend of Banza pasta? Plus, how has people’s interest in general been changed?
The blue line shows the changes in search volume from the whole world over the past 5 years. It started with a small volume. There were two big spikes in April 2016 and July 2017. Since then, it seems that the trend gradually has been on the rise in spite of further fluctuations.
This indicates a continuous interest from people. If the trend continues, it is likely that we see stable growth in the future as well. The Google Trends also shows from which countries those search volumes came.
In the map, the darker the higher traffic. It tells you that the biggest volume came from the U.S. followed by Canada, Portugal, and the UK. Banza says that they are not officially shipping to other countries except Canada yet.
Review Analysis Summary
We have just seen my review analysis using word cloud, sentiment analysis, and Google Trends. All combined, it tells us that the majority of the customers had a positive experience with Banza pasta. The Google Trends result also supports that a growing number of people searched about Banza pasta, and the uptrend is likely to continue if the past trend goes on.
Banza Cooking Tips
These tips are shared by Banza to help customers to gain best results when cooking.
Test Texture
After a minute before the shortest cook time from the pasta box, start tasting your pasta. Depending on your stove, cooking time can be different. So, try tasting your pasta until they have the texture you prefer.
Remove Starch
When you get the texture you prefer, strain and rinse it under water. This allows to remove the chickpea starch that forms during the cooking process.
Decrease the Foam
Fill your pot with more water and reduce the burner power to a lower level. Add a splash of olive oil to the water and scrape some foam off with a spoon.
Benefits of Chickpeas
We kept hearing chickpeas as the main ingredient of Banza pasta. Besides the health benefits listed above, let’s find out what general benefits chickpeas have. This health blog post explains in detail.
They contain high vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein. These elements benefit our body by helping weight management, blood sugar control, and more. Consuming chickpeas in your diet regularly supports your health and may decrease your risk of developing chronic diseases including heart disease and cancer.
The raw ingredients are affordable and easy to buy at many grocery stores. They can be useful to make a great meat alternative in a vegetarian and vegan meal. Chickpeas also taste good so including it in your diet will be good for your health and taste.
Conclusion
We learned the major benefits of Banza pasta and saw how many customers thought about the healthy pasta. The Google Trends analysis also told us that the level of people’s interest can gradually go up in the future. There were some mixed opinions on the taste and the texture from the reviews. But, there was no doubt about its health benefits. I believe it can be a good idea to start with a small pack first to try. If you like it, you can officially put it in your meal as a pasta alternative.
