'Does pasta make you gain weight?', 'Does pasta make you fat?' ... Google is awash with un-fun questions relating to carbs and cals, but now the verdict is in.
It's official: eating pasta regularly doesn’t lead to weight gain, according to our favourite new study.
Though a staple in many countries, particularly around the Med (ciao, Mediterranean Diet!), pasta's classification as a refined carb has seen it condemned as public enemy no. 1, locked away at the back of the store cupboard with no chance of parole.
But it's not only a good source of folate (vitamin B-9), calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, it can in fact help with weight management or loss, as part of a healthy diet in children and adults.
Scientists Lisa Sanders and Joanne Slavin analysed 38 studies into the connection between white pasta intake and body weight outcomes, including looking into its impact on appetite-related hormones and glycemic response.
They found ‘despite the perception of some that pasta is a “fattening” food, current observational evidence suggests pasta is generally not associated with body weight or body composition and may be inversely associated with BMI or abdominal obesity.’
Finally some good news: no link between pasta intake and the chance of being overweight.
Can we get a heck yeh? And a spaghetti, per favore.
This corroborates findings of our second favourite study, from Italy in 2016, which showed people who eat pasta actually have a smaller body mass index (BMI) than those who don’t.
Unsurprisingly this doesn’t include that creamy carbonara sauce or lashings of parmasan — no such luck.
Another shocker, Sanders and Slavin found pasta to be a ‘low-glycemic carbohydrate’, unlike its white carb cohort of bread, potatoes and rice — jury is still out on noodles, which weren’t looked at in the study.
The main things to consider are portion size (snore, we know — 75g of dried pasta, FYI) and how you cook it. Mastering the perfect ‘al dente’ (meaning 'to the tooth' in Italian, and less accurately — a bit of a bite in English) allows some of the resistant starch to remain, giving it a similar glycemic index to brown rice or buckwheat, as does letting it cool or reheating. By making harder to digest and break down into glucose, it lessens the chance of a sugar spike. And bonus: resistant starch is good for the gut bacteria.
Buon appetito!
Bex is a wellbeing writer, brand consultant and qualified yoga and meditation teacher who likes baths, crystals, running with her pup Gustav and making unboring vegan-ish food.
