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Food

World's Greatest Study Claims Pasta Will Help You Lose Weight


By

Rebecca Fishbein

Published Jul 5, 2016

Modified Jul 5, 2016


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By

Rebecca Fishbein

Published Jul 5, 2016

Modified Jul 5, 2016


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When I came into Gothamist HQ this morning after a long and beautiful weekend, I discovered my milk had gone bad, Brexit continues to be a disaster, and Holden Caulfield got the NY Post to publish this whiny anti-millennial #HotTake. This morning was not good. But then the most beautiful news splashed across my Twitter feed—pasta, according to totally non-biased Italian scientists, is not fattening, and in fact, it might even make you slimmer. Really, if anything were worthy of a massive fireworks celebration, it's this.

The Good News comes courtesy of a study published in Nutrition & Diabetes this week. 10 researchers from Neuromed (Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo) followed 23,000 Italians to see how their pasta consumption correlated to weight. They found that folks who ate a moderate amount of pasta had a more favorable hip-to-waist ratio than people who either ate too much pasta or, surprisingly, no pasta at all. In fact, researchers discovered that people who ate moderate amounts of pasta were more likely to stick to a Mediterranean diet, which has long been associated with better health and lower BMIs, ergo, pasta made people healthy. It's science!

This is the second bit of excellent food news this month, since another study from last week found that butter isn't nearly as terrible for you as my mother thinks it is. Then, of course, there's the revelation that coffee can reduce liver damage, that drinking red wine before bed can make you thinner, and that beer will help you lose weight faster than diet soda, a study my senior year of college does not support, but I'll take it. The world really is as Sleeper predicted:

Of course, an important caveat about this pasta study is that overeating pasta is still not good for you, as is pretty much the case with overeating anything. As for how much pasta is too much pasta, I would hypothesize that Strega Nona overdoes it, but probably not by much.

Tagged

happiness

italy

italy forever

joy

lots of joy

pasta

pasta is the best food

science


Rebecca Fishbein

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