Anti-Pasta: When Italian Futurists Tried to Ban Pasta in Italy

As an Italian, my experience is that I can’t have any satisfaction with less than 180g of pasta. Therefore I only eat it like once a week and make it a little event. Growing up I had similar portions almost on a daily basis and I was never overweight. Trick: do sports. A lot.

> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large.

This is true for every food in the US.. (I'm an overweight French guy who eat too much but in the US even the "small" portions were far too much for me)

That reminds me of this meme:

https://mk0dietvsdiseascuno2.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...

Yup. When I was boxing my coach started me on weight loss and recommended pasta or rice for dinner with the serving size being that of a small bowl and not "heap the plate and pile the rest of the food on top"

Carbs are energy. You just have to be sure to only eat what you need and actually use the energy. Otherwise the body starts storing it as fat. And like you said small portions of fatty things like cheese and eggs are perfectly fine as long as you burn what you eat.

Purely anecdotal and unscientific, but a few years ago I watched a documentary in which a TV team followed identical twins. One of them only ate pasta-based meals for a month, the other only ate potato-based meals (if I remember correctly, they made sure that both meals where basically the same, modulo potato/pasta). They checked blood results, BMI, etc. before and after the diet. The potato-eating twin gained a few kilos and had generally worse blood results than the pasta-eating twin, who kept her weight. Interestingly, the potato-eating twin hated potatoes after 4 weeks of eating them and had to force herself to touch them at the end, while the pasta-eating twin still liked pasta.

This is why food bans are bad. The same thing that harms one person can work for someone else.

Even something like Bloomberg's ban on large sodas is probably heavy handed. Sugar is not always a poison. It can be a valuable fuel, even at large quantities (and large sizes can also add a lot of convenience to some people's lives).

> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large.

Portion size was the key for me. I stopped feeling heavy and lethargic after pasta meals once I started weighting my pasta before eating. This made a world of difference on my state after eating and, by contrast, helped me realise how heavy I usually felt after eating (80g of uncooked pasta seem to be a good balance for me).

> from fake guards around the fields

Is there any actual proof of this? The same story has been told about Frederick the Great, and I always assumed it was an urban legend.

It's worth noting that it wasn't a 100% dismissal of the findings. From Retraction Watch:

But the findings haven’t disappeared — the authors have replaced the paper with a new version, which softens its earlier claims.

https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/does-the-mediterranea...

You probably know that salt is often fortified with iodine. Quite a lot of other basic foodstuffs, including bread, rice, and pasta, are fortified with folic acid, iron, niacin, etc. It's a largely forgotten program of the USDA that has been wildly popular in reducing the incidence of nutritional diseases. I presume that's what you're referring to, because I just looked at the ingredients on the spaghetti boxes of the two most popular brands of pasta in the U.S., Barilla and Mueller's, and they only list wheat--semolina & durham, and durham, respectively. But they're both also fortified, with Mueller including that in the list of ingredients, and Barilla listing them separately as vitamins/minerals.

I understand it's de rigour to eat "pure" foods, but it's actually led to reduced intake of important nutrients in the wider population. For example, until very recently iodine wasn't included in prenatal vitamins because for much of the past century most people used fortified salt. But with the increased use of kosher salt in home kitchens, medical advice not to add too much salt when cooking, and the fact that prepackaged foods don't contain iodized salt, iodine intake began to drop in the United States and UK.

> I noticed that after eating pasta, my blood sugar stayed elevated for 4-5 hours.

But how long your blood sugar stayed high after eating "fast carbs"?

Do you mean that in a negative way? A food with carbs that release over 4-5 hours seems ideal for lunch.

Do you eat any carbs? Potatoes, rice?. How did they affect the sensor

Add fibers and you'll mitigate most of the issues. E.g. a good vegetable-based sauce with the pasta, "e via".

I have diabetes. For me, pasta is in the "normal" range.

"Fast" -- candy, soda, etc. Hits in 20 mins and is gone in 2.5 hrs.

"Normal" -- pasta, a sandwich, rice, etc. Hits in 30-45 mins and is gone in 4/5 hrs

"Slow" -- high fat foods, peanut butter, meats, etc. hits in ~2h and is gone in 7-9

Made a little chart (†). The area under those curves is the same for the same g of carbohydrate but the shape is different.

The thing is, pasta is heavy. Compared to most meals it's dense and almost pure carbohydrate. So if you have even a little bit of insulin resistance you will definitely feel it.

Then there's alcohol, that lives in the complete opposite corner: a shot of vodka hits in the "fast" category but then actually lowers the BG later on.

† https://i.postimg.cc/5tqc24zn/fast-slow.png

They were also the first to notice, in writing in any case, that the world around them now sounded of machines so why not use that in music? Much like, our lives are increasing electronic, and so is so much now of the music we listen to. We truly reflect the world around us in our creative expressions.

Futurists, though, were by and large fascists.

Punk is strong anti-fascist.

The post-Fascist futurists had a lot going for them as well - especially the Soviets, who basically created the foundation for modern electronic music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTj1TtXHKG0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTiSkiUw7dA&list=OLAK5uy_lx_...

(side note: I lament being born too late to ever experience real subculture...)

Maybe something like 1930: When Italian Futurists Declared War on Pasta?

I have to admit, I was also expecting an article from 1930 being used to hn.

Though still an interesting article or at least i'd never heard about any of this before anyway.

That's true. I've cut it.

I think rice is the opposite.

I had a coworker say that since rice absorbs water, it can also do this during digestion.

I noticed a similar effect when I was drinking too much. I would only be hungover after having rice.

And to clarify a point, it was fried rice that cooled, meaning it wasn't watery.

Nobody will eat noodles in the 22nd century. We will feed on biomechanical components and pure concentrated energy. The future is now. #DownWithPasta

Noodle is apparently: "late 18th century: from German Nudel, of unknown origin." (Google)

However: "Although popular legend claims Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy following his exploration of the Far East in the late 13th century, pasta can be traced back as far as the 4th century B.C., where an Etruscan tomb showed a group of natives making what appears to be pasta." (wikipedia)

Personally I've never referred to Spaghetti as noodles, and noodles to me means long thin things you put in stir-fry/ramen. Plus, there's many other shapes of pasta other than "noodle" shaped.

Penne is pasta but not a noodle.

Rice noodles aren't pasta.

Pasta refers to the substance the food is made from, not its form.

Well, this is diet advice from Italian Fascists.

The whole article is the comment.

You're suggesting there exists someone who might read this interesting morsel of history and walk away, convinced by the excerpts, with anti-pasta views accompanied by a superstition that has them avoiding Italian cuisine on their first date unless warned otherwise.

Seems quite far-fetched. Though who are we to stop such a gentleman from sparing a woman some indigestion after reading a 1930s dating tip?

>Over the last several decades they have debunked and disproven this several times.

Citations please.