This is a special message from Barilla.

Now that more consumers are seeking healthful options, an increasing number of menus are sporting whole grain foods. It is no longer a surprise to find whole grain spaghetti with fresh vegetables in a casual restaurant or a college dining hall or whole grain macaroni and cheese in a school lunchroom.

In fact, whole grain versions of some foods traditionally made with regular flour are growing robustly. For example, the menuing of whole grain pasta in restaurants rose 58.6 percent between the second quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2011, according to Mintel Menu Insights. Whole grain pizza increased 49.5 percent on menus in that period. Whole grain menu items as a category rose 25 percent.

Staying in step with the trend is Saladworks, a 104-unit chain of salad restaurants based in Conshohocken, Pa., specializing in fresh, tossed to-order salads. Early this year, Saladworks added Barilla Whole Grain rotini pasta to the 50-plus salad toppings customers can choose for building their own salads. In addition, the new rotini provides a whole grain alternative to traditional semolina pasta in a signature salad like the Turkey Club, a combination of romaine, iceberg lettuce, radiatore pasta, roasted turkey, crisp bacon and tomatoes.

"We view it as a very successful rollout," said Paul Steck, Saladworks president, noting that the whole grain rotini now accounts for about 27 percent of the orders that involve pasta.

How do you explain the growing interest in whole grains? To begin, consumers are clearly seeking healthier choices on some, if not all, dining occasions.

"We see pretty much across the board that people are becoming more attuned to what they put in their body," said Steck. "This is not to say that everyone has become a health food enthusiast or a vegetarian, just that they are more concerned about what they are eating."

The message that the ample fiber and nutrients of whole grains can boost wellness and lessen the risk of chronic diseases seems to be sinking in. Educational programs like Whole Grains Month, which is marking its fourth year in September, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans released earlier this year, are urging consumers to make at least half of the grains they eat whole grains.

Yet another reason may be that consumers simply have a taste for delicious whole grains. “I think generally the whole marketplace has worked to improve the quality and taste profile of whole grain items,” said Peggy Moore Bodnar R.D. L.D., supervisor of food and nutrition services for the Independent School District of Boise City, Idaho.

Over the past three years, the Boise district, which serves 22,000 meals per day at 48 sites, has gradually raised the whole grain content of house-baked items like cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, cookies and breadsticks to 51 percent, Bodnar said. In addition, it has taken some "big jumps," like introducing whole grain pasta and brown rice, as she put it.

Students are now enjoying Barilla Whole Grain spaghetti, elbow macaroni and rotini, typically topped with meat sauce, alfredo sauce or tossed with parmesan cheese and margarine. "I don’t know of anyone else who is really on the cutting edge of quality and cost the way Barilla is," Bodnar said.

Also popular is a fresh whole wheat pizza crust made by a local pizza chain. "It has become one of the kids’ favorites," said Bodnar. "The younger ones in elementary school didn’t even notice it was a different crust."

The University of Texas at Austin has been grooming its campus menus for the 2011 Whole Grains Challenge in October. This special awards program of the Whole Grains Council recognizes restaurants and foodservice establishments that promote whole grain foods. To participate, an operator must menu at least one healthy and delicious whole grain option at every meal. Of course, in a setting like college and university foodservice, where students demand variety and excitement, there will be a lot more than just one whole grain option.

"Obviously, the more whole grain dishes you serve, the more creative you are and the more education you offer about whole grains, the better your chances of winning," said Lindsay Gaydos R.D. L.D., registered dietician for the Division of Housing and Food Service at the university, which has about 51,000 students.

UT Austin is gearing up for the Whole Grains Challenge by revamping familiar foods like pancakes and French toast with whole grain recipes and launching a build-your-own macaroni and cheese bar with a choice of Barilla Whole Grain or semolina pasta and a variety of toppings.

But those dishes are just the beginning for a dining staff as creative as UT Austin’s and a meal platform as versatile as pasta, endlessly adaptable to ingredients, ethnic influences and eating trends like the interest in whole grains. Other whole grain specialties will include tomato and pepper pasta, chicken fajita pasta, vegetarian bowtie pasta, Moroccan-style couscous and cranberry-quinoa salad.

Dishes like those promise to broaden campus culinary horizons in general as well as add to the ranks of whole grain pasta fans, a movement steadily advancing in the mainstream.

"We hope the Challenge will give students a chance to taste-test some items they might not try under other circumstances," said Gaydos. "We will also look for new items they like that we can put on the menu permanently."