Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America? | Hacker News Reader

Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

grubstreet.com

844 pointspolm23323 comments

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud.

Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect their monopoly, and will coerce the government into helping them.

I read an article about import taxes on sugar that were created to keep out competition, and as a result everything uses corn syrup. Other examples abound.

Unfortunately, the solution of government oversight of itself (such as FBI breathing down the neck of the NSA), has obvious circular drawbacks.

I can't help but think of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. During a golf tournament, he gives the officials some money saying "keep it fair, keep it fair!"

If you like this writing style, food critic Jay Rayner writes in a way I find pretty similar: https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/jay-rayner-on-restau...

I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well. Told another way, a firm in the marketplace for pasta found that a competitor was out of regulation with their product, and they found a person in congress who could press a slow-moving and ineffective agency to do better at doing their job: enforcing said regulations.

That's exactly what you want your elected representatives to do: listen to their constituents and act accordingly to ensure a fair outcome according to the law. Note that no laws were changed in this to favor one company over another, if anything the previous state was one in which the company in question was profiting from shipping out-of-regulation product, perhaps at decreased cost compared to in-compliance firms.

The rule itself can be debated, but in general I find that a law specifying in exact numbers what a product should contain in order to qualify for a label to be a very good law. It's exact, it's measurable, and it's achievable by all. Fair and equal enforcement should make it a good regulation.

If you say "well you don't need this law, it's over-regulation", that's a good argument -- I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. On one hand, I think Standard of Identification make a lot of sense, but I also know that drawing the lines can be a very delicate art form (what makes a pasta noodle vs. a ramen noodle? What makes champagne vs. sparkling wine? And so on)

Edit: Also, I think a lot of this could be dealt with better by an FDA that has a good communication arm. "We found this company to not be compliance with existing law and took it off the shelves" sounds a lot better than having the company get to print saying "Seems like a hold up by the FDA"

Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and legislators who can legislate or enforce on their behalf. The senior people will know each other and get things moving.

Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporates.

So when you read a story and think things 'worked quite well'. It's just an example of selectively applying laws & regulations, which were only introduced to keep out competition and protect entrenched interests. That's why large corporates love regulations, it protects their entire business model and imposes significant costs on new entrants.

What do you think "access" looks like?

There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access.

What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again.

The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be.

>Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate.

This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative.

[1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.

It's small relative to other industries but its still a multi-billion dollar industry. Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporates, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance. I'm sure many of these manufacturers are the largest employers in some congressional districts so it wouldn't be a surprise if they managed to get a congressman to write the FDA to focus attention on this. The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention.

My point is that their scale and resources gives them access. A competitor breached a pointless regulation [1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. If one of the large corporates breached that regulation, they would have been able to quickly agree corrective action with minimal supply chain disruption.

[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.

> but its still a multi-billion dollar industry

There's 330 million people in the US. Everything the average person spends six dollars a year on is a multi- billion dollar industry.

>Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporate, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance

Think about how many people someone will work with and befriend over a lifetime. You're pretending that's a high bar when it's a low bar.

>The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention.

You should go to the NPA's website (linked in TFA, you have exolymph's comment to thank for prompting me to look it up), go to the membership directory and start looking up these pasta companies before you run your mouth. While many of the companies are wholly owned subsidiaries or larger more mainstream food brands but none of them seem to exceed the BLS definition of medium sized. If the FDA enforcement action unfolded the way we are all assuming it is then that would seem to indicate medium-smallish companies do have their legislator's ear (or they just tipped off the FDA directly and then just kept following up until the FDA was annoyed enough to do something).

Edit:

Here's Medallion Foods, Virginia Park foods which seem to be among the biggest (ballpark estimate based on facility sized and value of what's in the parking lot) and one in Montana that I thought was cool because they had the street named after them. All these companies seem to have their office location the same as their manufacturing location so it's kind of hard to get a sense of scale.

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,...

> A competitor breached a pointless regulation[1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year.

>[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.

The last century was 20yr ago. HN would be out for blood if someone was caught importing completely functional catalytic converters or bicycle helmets that didn't meet some irrelevant to performance nuance of the law. HN is sympathetic in this case because the product in question is an upscale-ish pasta. If regulations on some ingredient were being manipulated in a way that was only affecting production of cheap lite beer we'd be reading through several hundred snarky comments about how this is a good thing.

Chastising someone here for ‘running their mouth’ when they are commenting in good faith is not welcome.

No one was ‘out for blood,’ the poster simply made the claim that the inability to lobby effectively is a challenge to smaller companies. That’s exactly why the consortium you listed exists, and is based in DC.

I would guess that, usually, interests align and it most often helps a small manufacturer that ADM (16 bil revenue a year) is in the pasta business. However, if ADM wants to get a good deal on the majority stake of a gluten-free pasta up-and-comer, they likely have a few levers they can pull to create pressure.

This food regulation is not really based on health or nutrients or anything like that, nor is it pointless. It stems from an effort to define what can be marketed as a pasta noodle vs. other similar yet different products, like ramen noodles.

There are similar regulations that define, for example, what is a whiskey and what isn't.

Sure X amount of Y substance vs. X-epsilon amount will always look ridiculous on the face of it, but ultimately there needs to exist some line and some definition.

I don't find this argument particularly convincing.

Am I drinking "sparkling wine" or "champagne"? Honestly, why should I care, I just care about how much I like the product and how much it costs.

I'm for regulation around areas about product safety, but this seems to not be what's going on here.

I tend to agree with you but you might find this more common than you realize. I’ve noticed in my lifetime products I like change their recipes. I’ve also seen products once labeled as ice cream now labeled as frozen dairy dessert. I’ve seen this type of thing in lots of different products. Not just ice cream. And I’m not convinced anything changed legally in many cases. Usually I suspect it was to reduce costs.

It’s now something I actively look for on packaging when a product gets a new look.

    Am I drinking "sparkling wine" or "champagne"? 
    Honestly, why should I care, I just care about 
    how much I like the product and how much it costs.

I think you are seriously underestimating the utility of walking into a store, seeing a product labeled as XYZ, and being assured that it meets some reasonable definition of XYZ without having to do a bunch of research and/or testing on your own.

Packaged food is an extremely cost-sensitive product category to put it mildly. There is tremendous pressure on these companies to shave off every penny they can when it comes to production costs.

I strongly suggest that we do not want to see what might happen if the FDA didn't enforce some kind of minimum definitions for various categories.

For a sneak peek of the probable outcome, you can learn about the history of adulterated food products: https://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+adulterated+food

> There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies that make it all.

Uh...

> They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip.

I think you're vastly underestimating the impact of lobbying and overestimating the cost

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/708195702

Tax Professor wants to try to get a policy (automatically filled out tax returns for CA state taxes)he thinks will be good for the public passed.

He gets nowhere.

Hires a lobbyist at a discount

> BANKMAN: They gave me a deal because they thought it would be kind of fun to work for this crazed professor.

> VANEK SMITH: They were working for you, just you?

> BANKMAN: Yeah. They were working for me. And so the normal price, I think, would have been $140,000 to get Mike's services. But he gave it to me for only 35. So I paid 35,000, I believe.

Got a lot closer (opt in automatic filling) despite massive opposition from anti tax groups and tax prep software lobbyists

Reading that transcript actually left me thinking the system worked okay in this particular case, even though it led to a bad (in my opinion) policy outcome. The money bought access, not results: in the end, the legislators who voted against largely it did so because of personal belief the policy was bad or because of political pressure from an important campaign group (+), not because of money from Intuit (and it didn't take too much in absolute terms---$140K at full price---to equalize the lobbying power of a single-person pet project with that of a multibillion-dollar company with a strong vested interest in seeing the legislation defeated).

(+): I'm not personally a Grover Norquist fan, but he's influential because a lot of Americans really don't like taxes, and the argument that people will be more opposed to taxes if they're more burdensome does seem internally consistent.

Nobody likes taxes, and Norquist just makes it more painful. Ideologues are jerks.

>Nobody likes taxes, and Norquist just makes it more painful. Ideologues are jerks.

Not nobody. I'm one of the ones who agrees with (purportedly) Oliver Wendell Holmes[0].

[0] "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/13/taxes-civilize/

I'm ok with paying taxes (for the reason cited) but I don't like paying them. And part of that is the inconvenience that Norquist has worked to ensure.

I think it's obviously true that monied interests will have greater access to regulators and corporations than smaller operations do. We should seek to limit that advantage when possible, but it's doubtful that we can ever truly eliminate it.

Speaking specifically about this case though, it doesn't seem like a big business tossing its weight around, but some large multinational businesses working within existing regulatory and bureaucratic systems to ensure their competitors are not unfairly gaining by flouting the law.

It is akin to an auto company finding another company has saved money by not complying with emissions standards.

> I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well.

Having clear [communication of] regulations that food importers could understand, and expect to be enforced in a consistent way that didn't require a lobbying arm, would work a lot better.

I am generally a pro regulation type of person, but the article suggests the regulation was meant to block Asian noodles and favor European ones. So whether or not De Cecco bucatini needs the extra few milligrams of iron, while still satisfying EU health requirements, is a relevant question.

> I find that a law specifying in exact numbers what a product should contain in order to qualify for a label to be a very good law.

Good in theory. But it's also likely to slow down innovation or even kill it in its tracks. Maybe a producer wants to mix up the ingredients because they're making a substandard product. But maybe they discovered a way to deliver higher quality or lower price with an iteration on the original. In the long run, consumers will mostly discover the shitty products and stop buying them anyway.

For example if such a law was in place for desktop computers, it almost assuredly would have required x86-compatible CPUs. It's highly unlikely that Apple would made the investment to produce the incredible gains in the M1, if it was forced to market the MacBook Air as "not legally a laptop"

It’s a notebook computer, duh

I've never heard a normal person ever use the phrase "notebook computer".

> I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well.

Permit me indulge in a minor rant. Not against you, just generally.

A specialty pasta manufacturer in Italy (home of pasta, but what do they know?) can no longer export a specialty pasta (which they sell legally in Italy), because it's marginally under-enriched by US government standards for pasta, and so the consumers in the US, who specifically seek out their favorite food, must go without, and this is ... the system working as intended, indeed, working quite well!

> If you say "well you don't need this law, it's over-regulation", that's a good argument

Ah. The thing is it's not a specific piece of legislation, it's one of those regulations the FDA itself came up with to begin with (Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21 Chapter 1 Subchapter B Section 139.115, if I'm reading it right).

So then, aside from the fact that it's bullshit to begin with, and no one is changing the bullshit, and that everyone is expected to accept the other 114-plus sections times the 138-or-more parts of Subchapter B times all the twenty-plus other titles, and whatever minutiae they may demand... and that broadly we are all expected take this class of thing as simply as The Way Things Are, a perfectly natural consequence of doing business in our world that we dare not question, well, then -- yes, aside from all that, you're quite right, everything is working quite well!

And yet somehow I feel things are broken, and moreover, that if you say something about it, you'll find a dozen people to complain that you're nothing but an eeeevil capitalist who would poison our oceans and black out our skies just to make an extra $3.50 in pocket change, if not simply out of spite generally.

>you'll find a dozen people to complain that you're nothing but an eeeevil capitalist who would poison our oceans and black out our skies just to make an extra $3.50 in pocket change, if not simply out of spite generally.

I wouldn't be one of those people, trust me. I won't go into what my line of work is, but suffice to say I may actually be one of those evil capitalists.

I DO think this is one of those cost-of-doing-business type of things when it comes to international trade. I think most consumers appreciate that when they go and buy something that labels itself "pasta", it conforms to some standard that we can agree is reasonable. Otherwise, you'll likely have someone who stuffs ramen noodles into a pasta package and sells it to some suckers. And now we all have to always know which are the "real" pasta brands and which are the fakes(yes, that might be easy enough to do, but it's the overall cognitive load of having to do that with every product that should concern us). That's just an example, but that's why the regulations exist.

And you can't just say "well they sell this in Italy, and that's the home of pasta, so c'mon man this can't be right", because Italy I'm sure has like 3x more regulations around pasta selling (a cursory google search shows this is likely true), and any change they make to their regulation will keep in mind the interests of their consumers and their producers. They will not be thinking of American interests when making those regulations.

Finally, it's worth keeping in mind that this one company that was recently restricted for not being in compliance is NOT the only manufacturer of Bucatini, and in fact may not be the largest or best manufacturer either. It's just one company that returned the reporter's calls and had an answer for them.

The writing was brilliant. Reading it was like quenching a long thirst. It reminds of me reading the New York Times or Financial Times 10 or more years ago.

Your sugar example is not a good example because the US setup a mandate to be totally food supply independent after the Dust Bowl/famine in the early part of the last century.

So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.

That’s not the history I’m familiar with regarding sugar tariffs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/u-s-su...

It’s very amusing to me that the US subsidized domestic sugar production, and then also pays for diabetes and it’s related healthcare costs.

I’m confident that the future will look back and determine sugar to be one of the most costly habits of people.

You linked to an opinion piece that doesn't cite anything.

It criticizes that there are broad staple food import tariffs, but does not discuss the purpose of these policies, which is national food security.

The US has not experienced a food shortage, despite the normal incidence of crop failures in over a hundred years.

The fact that Americans suffer from food oversupply is absolutely a first world problem.

Sorry, I didn’t realize it was an opinion piece. I had just remembered reading multiple times that sugar tariffs were implemented to enrich domestic sugar producers. This seems like a better analysis:

https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/03/18/sweet-nothings-th...

Sugar, like all crop staples are supported by the government to ensure that crops are overproduced to protect against crop failure and famine.

Any article, like the one you just linked, that omits this fact is a horrible source of information.

I'm sure you HAVE INDEED read the misinformation about farm subsidies before - it is a popular lie.

This article talks a little bit more about current high food prices globally, and how it impacts US food security stockpiles....

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4770135&page=1

Sounds like you didn’t read your own source then...

> It’s very amusing to me that the US subsidized domestic sugar production, and then also pays for diabetes and it’s related healthcare costs.

Subsidizing domestic sugar production by spiking the price of sugar... means less sugar consumption. What's the joke?

I had the very opposite reaction. The snobbery of “the only pasta worth eating”, which is an insult to the diversity of Italian cuisine, deflated me right at the start. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but also that there is a hint of self-deprecating truth to it... think I’m getting old.

I also hugely disliked the style and tone of the article. I finished it thinking "well, I guess anyone can call themselves a journalist nowadays". The humor was out of place too, just coming across as snobbish most of the time, even though I can tell what the author is doing. It's just....too much.

But hey, other people like it so who am I too judge ;-)

For me this had a David Sedaris, obsessive-compulsive writing style that I ended up hugely enjoying, though I admit I didn't get it at first and almost gave up reading. The fact that she opened a Freedom of Information request with the FDA about noodles while acknowledging that the agency was most likely preoccupied with the pandemic made me laugh out loud.

If this were just a matter-of-fact reportage on a particular type of pasta shortage I doubt it'd hold much interest for anyone. The whole enjoyment for me was the gonzo reporting style of someone going off the rails about the shortage of a particular type of noodle.

I don't normally comment on points count, but I've never had a comment go from +12 to 0 before, what a polarising opinion ;-)

Don't worry, you're not alone in thinking this article was trash, I stopped reading after the first paragraph

It’s like they’re trying to sound so refined and particular that only one kind of pasta is worth eating, but it makes you think they know nothing about pasta, or cooking it.

Funny, I read it as entirely the opposite, as very tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating, where the author just exaggerates these things but anyone would know he doesn't mean them seriously. Interesting that we seem to have such different reactions to this writing. :-)

There's this strange cultural divide in the US, and it's not a republican-Democrat thing or a gender thing or a race thing. People from certain cliques are more comfortable with snark, self deprecation, and the sort of hyperbolic lampooning that this article engaged in (I'm in this camp), whereas others read snobbery and cruelty and such from identical sources (and I'm fairly certain the author isnot implying they are better than anyone because of their love for 'the best pasta').

It might be a coastal thing. My Brooklyn friends are usually camp A, my California people skew more camp B, but that's not a hard rule and super subject to sample bias.

I guess Jeremy Howard ran into camp B with his notebook talk, hard

> I'm fairly certain the author is not implying they are better than anyone because of their love for 'the best pasta'

That’s the thing - I am sure they (and the readers) do feel superior for their choice of pasta - or something equally pedestrian, it is what makes the whole “hyperbolic lampooning” work - it wouldn’t be funny if didn’t have a vein of truth.

That’s off-putting, maybe because we cant identify with that attitude anymore. Different life stages (I’d be surprised if the author is over 26).

> That’s off-putting, maybe because we cant identify with that attitude anymore. Different life stages (I’d be surprised if the author is over 26).

Maybe that style of dry humor is off-putting and associated with a specific age to you, but I find it to be timeless.

The author's in her mid 30s, and there are numerous other older people who use a similar sardonic wry sense of humor well, from David Sedaris to the kindhearted kvetching of old jewish grandmothers.

What you're doing with this comment is both similar and different. You're effectively saying "Well, I don't like it because I'm more mature; I can recognize that there's a grain of truth in her self-depreciation, and by recognizing that, I'm better than her". Effectively, you're aggrandizing yourself in the same way you accuse her of doing so, but without any of the humor.

> I am sure they (and the readers) do feel superior for their choice of pasta

I find that likely as well - that the author really feels some superiority over the pedestrian spagetti - but then they started shaming orecchiette and satire becomes the most likely explanation.

I don’t find it snobbish at all. The author is making high stakes out of an obviously low stakes situation. It’s absurdist. I don’t find it particularly funny, but it is a comedy piece through and through.

This is not a person who is taking themselves seriously:

> I felt more determined than ever to solve this mystery, not just for myself but for the cast of Saturday Night Live and also the rest of the people of the United States of America, who had been through too much for too long to then have insult added to injury via the spontaneous and inexplicable disappearance of the best noodle.

I agree that the writing is well done, though the story didn’t hold my attention. I bailed at about the halfway point.

That becomes clear as the article progresses, but you need to get through the first few paragraphs.

I think it's deliberately hyperbolic; I don't see any reason to read it as the author literally believing that.

>Italian cuisine

Wow, I hope you reserved some of your outrage for pasta from other cuisines. Or do they not count lol

Gonzo food writing w a sprinkling of twitterhumor

The sugar tax is pretty simple. Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't.

> Corn grows in north america and sugar cane doesn't.

Sugarcane most definitely grows in North America. Florida alone produces hundreds of thousands of tons of raw sugar annually.

I dare OP to drive around outside of Lafayette, LA and roll his window down and tell me sugarcane doesn't grow in America

It'd be more accurate to say that corn grows in many more places in North America than sugar cane. I was surprised to learn that vastly more pounds of sugar from cane is produced in the US (~32 million pounds a year) than corn syrup (~8 million pounds a year).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_industry_of_the_United_S...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Unite...

The values listed there are the sugar cane harvest, not the sugar produced from it.

Per https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/100085/sss-m-388.p... the recovery rate varies from 9 to 14 percent.

Cane sugar production runs about 4 million short tons, which is about 8 billion pounds. Beets add a similar, somewhat larger amount.

HFCS production is also on a similar scale, billions of pounds a year. But then 80% of corn goes to animal feed and ethanol production, so HFCS isn't the major end use.

One aspect of the article's chatty style that I liked was that it gave a glimpse into how "reporting" sausage gets made: calling experts up on the phone to try to get them to tell you a story, filing information requests, looking up publicly available (but obscure) information. Even though the author is self-deprecating, by the end I was impressed by her persistence and ability to dig up real new information. I sometimes wish more straight-laced reporting would be more forthcoming with these kinds of details.

That's really funny to me. I saw this article yesterday being raved about on foodie Twitter, but didn't try submitting to HN because I figured many users might be a little annoyed by not only a food story, but one that takes 1,200 words (i.e. the length of "Part 1: The Mystery") before getting to the chase. A 1,200 word scene-setting intro is a lot for any kind of reader so it's a testament to the author's skill that it's entertaining enough to keep readers' attention.

I appreciate these sorts of long-form pieces, personally. I have always been a voracious reader though.

The taxes on sugar were to prop up the (heavily subsidized) US corn industry. Why do you think they even water down the gasoline with it? There's so much of it, and it's so artificially cheap, and they want to keep demand high to keep the farmers happy.

The taxes on sugar have nothing to do with corn. Corn producers do not need HFCS to stay in business, they have ethanol when they need a subsidy; less than 5% of US production goes to HFCS, but the rest is basically split 50/50 between animal feed and ethanol.

Sugar imports are taxed so that US producers (cane in FL & LA, sugar beets in the upper midwest and upper great plains states) do not have to compete with cane sugar from Brazil and Mexico. It is as simple as that.

At the beginning of the article I was thinking surely there are more important things to write about, but it dives down a pretty absurd rabbit hole. Especially funny is when the pasta spokesperson begins commiserating that the reporter is making more work for them.

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard?

Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer.

How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a European dealer and have it shipped over.

Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system?

Yeah yeah, everyone can point to an example where their regulatory agency's anxieties/delays/negligence prevented some issue, but fail to consider the impacts of all of their other delays/rejections.

There are various regulatory trade-offs between safety and cost of compliance. For instance: Cars sold as new in Canada require daytime running lights and yellow rear turn signals, due to extended periods of low visibility. While the running lights are a requirement in Sweden, they aren't in Poland or many other European countries. There's been some effort on standardizing between US and Canada since 2016, which would allow for a North American market car to solely use yellow turn signals, but progress is slow.

Which is why we probably won't see much progress in harmonizing bigger regulations. Whose regulation gets to win? This has been a five-year fight over the color of a piece of plastic. Everyone even wants to agree - the automotive industry would love a worldwide standard to reduce specialized part count, rulemakers would love to agree in order to increase the shared market size (so everyone gets the same cars), but the actual standard to be put into place calls into conflict the exact safety versus cost thresholds each government has set. Imagine if there's actual conflict.

> over the color of a piece of plastic

It isn't even about the colour (which is trivial to control with software and 8 extra cents in LEDs), but about the colour of the plastic.

That's the dumb thing that proves it's about protectionism. Same with DRL: it's controllable in software.

Meanwhile, Canada lets you import any >17 year old hunk of junk from anywhere and that's somehow safe and okay (because it doesn't harm new car sales so directly, yet still much more fatal to occupants).

> Meanwhile, Canada lets you import

There are far more important reasons to do this than protectionism and it's disingenuous to skip them and jump straight to protectionism.

Banning old cars would harm the parts of the population which can't afford brand new cars (that's a huge chunk) and guarantees that every time regulation demands something new everyone has to buy a new car.

On the other hand not mandating new safety tech harms everyone in general and guarantees that cars new and old will forever be much worse than they need to be since manufacturers won't be in a hurry to spend more money on tech. Keep in mind that a car with DRL and ABS will be an "old car" a few years from now. 10+ year old cars have ABS today because at some point it was mandated on all new cars.

It's a reasonable compromise to let people buy and use the old cars as they are (or anything that uses old, outdated tech - lead based solder in electronics?) but demand that new ones constantly integrate new tech.

From what I’ve seen, the >17yr old imports aren’t to save money, but your chance to finally drive something exotic that wasn’t (or wouldn’t) be approved for sale here. E.g. RHD, Kei cars, Nissan Skylines

As someone passively enthusiast about cars, I think that's in general a good thing. People buying classic/old cars generally know it's not going to have current safety regulations, but may still appreciate it and take the risks.

I'm font on retro/rust-mods where they're updated with modern engines, controls, etc... others prefer completely stock/original as possible. In the end, it's not so different from being able to maintain a listed building in England or other heritage or historical works, other than it rolls down the roads.

For those who haven't been to the US, I was blown away that some cars use brake lights as the turn indicator - good video on the set up (and issues): https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA

I was confused the first time I saw this in the US. Thanks for sharing the video, but nonetheless I’m still surprised that something as common sense as amber vs red lights for different functions is still something US-bound models fail to adopt. As the video explains cost saving must not longer be an issue, so I guess it is regulatory inertia.

Slightly different regulations between EU and US/CA:

> "The colour of the turn signals on vehicles in Europe is legislated to be amber," says Thomas Tetzlaff, spokesman for Volkswagen Canada. "In North America, there is no such legislation, but there are different regulations about the minimal surface area of the blinkers."

> North American regulations say rear signal lights can be either red or amber. Canada and the U.S. specify a minimum size for turn signal lights, but regulations in the rest if the world do not, Transport Canada says.

> Often, the easiest way for companies to get their turn signals big enough, without building brand new rear lights specifically for North America, is to also use the brake light as a turn signal, Tetzlaff says.

* https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commutin...

All new EU models have daytime running lights and yellow turn lights. What ever is a requirement in Sweden is basically an EU one as well. Thanks to standardized EU certifications. Which is a good thing, mostly!

It’s true that EU regulation on this topic was harmonized in 2011. However, the harmonization actually loosened the Swedish requirements in several ways, particularly with regard to rear lights, which previously were required to be always on.

Which would make sense in general, wouldn't it? The thing with the rear lights being on.

Depends. Might make sense in countries with polar nights, not so much in the Mediterranean where it just sucks up energy, especially with EVs.

It does seem that the updated regulation allowed new cars to be less safe in the Nordics. It’s an interesting precedent.

I wouldn't imagine the power draw from always-on rear lights to be especially high compared to, you know, actually moving the vehicle, especially if those lights are LEDs. And the studies I'm finding measuring this exact concern don't seem to show particularly significant impacts on fuel efficiency / emissions for ICE vehicles (a couple percent, tops, and that's assuming small cars w/ tiny engines and some pretty comically inefficient DRL implementations - hardly relevant for creating a new standard that can mandate e.g. dedicated LED-based DRL systems).

I bought a car (Citroën) a few years ago, and told the dealer I wanted it so the rear lights would always be on. They configured whatever doohickey is responsible for that, and made sure to charge me for it. But now the rear lights are always on, like they're supposed to, and I feel a little safer.

I think it's super dumb that it's not a requirement any more, and I don't see any reason for the change.

That's what we have California for. They're like america's exhausted mother, constantly swooping in to prevent us putting bad things in our mouths or being jerks to other kids.

Your comment is cancer (in the State of California).

Daytime lights are obligatory in Poland since it joined EU - so for like 15 years. The standard is the same for whole EU.

If your car does not have those weak daytime lights (small lamps that basically dont do anything) then you are supposed to use the low/dipped beam. And most drivers use low beam all the time.

Using DRL during the day (i.e. normal visibility) is not mandatory in Austria. You may use them, or dipped beam, if you choose so.

There is one more difference between DRL in EU and NA: in EU, the parking lights must be off, while DRL is on. This is a problem with some older cars, which technically do have DRL, but keep the parking lights on (i.e. pre-F series BMW; the angel eyes are parking light). This is non compliant in EU.

> This has been a five-year fight over the color of a piece of plastic.

In the EU the turn signals is mandated to be amber. In the US/CA, the turn signal can be either amber or red, but must be of a certain area. Other jurisdictions do not have an area regulation.

So OEMs simply make brake lights double as turn signals when they import vehicles.

If the non-US OEMs 'just' made bigger turn signals they wouldn't have to do this.

> It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard?

America has a longstanding tradition of food fortification. Niacin is also used to supplement US diets featuring a corn staple -- corn's niacin is not bioavailable without additional processing traditional to Mesoamerican cultures. Probably more recognized today is iodized salt, which is responsible for perhaps a decade's worth of the Flynn effect in the US.

In the case of flour, Europe is lagging behind: https://www.ffinetwork.org/europe. Apparently Denmark went the extra step of banning enriched / fortified foods. You could probably argue that regional diets will naturally vary and that something like iodine supplements aren't required for Italians when they have ready access to seafood that Oklahomans don't. But since I'm pretty sure these enrichments aren't harmful to those who do have access, I imagine some of the divide is simply protectionism -- protecting your local markets and local manufacturers from cheaper American brands.

I've no idea how much Niacin is added in America, but you can have too much. Since we don't eat much corn here in Europe, packing food unnecessarily full of this supplement could be dangerous to health:

Niacin Toxicity

Symptoms of toxicity include: Flushing of the skin, primarily on the face, arms, and chest *This side effect may occur at doses as low as 30 mg/day. Itching. Nausea. Vomiting.

I'm really not sure where that citation is coming from. It's a Google web answer but the source has no citation. Wikipedia lists a textbook, rather than anything from NCBI, and I'm too lazy to dig further. A corn torilla or slice of bread in the US typically has 1-2 mg of niacin, and a daily recommendation of around 16mg.

3 oz (85 grams) of "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of the stuff[1], and average adults get about 30mg/day. Best I can tell this is about nicotinic acid specifically, and might be IV rather than ingestion, which is very much an apples and oranges situation.

    1: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Niacin-HealthProfessional/

Agree, I didn't dig - was the first result I found.

Fact is though, that here in Europe there is no need or value in adding this supplement, and generally the EU is wary of any adulterated foods without reason.

And for good reason.

> "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of [niacin]

That's off by a factor of 1000x -- it says 10.3 milligrams.

Apologies for the typo

Domestic producers of [all products] in [all countries] have a longstanding tradition of using the apparatus of government to protect their business from competition. These arguments typically take the form of national security, consumer safety and unfair competitive practices.

In some cases these arguments are made in good faith.

In even rarer cases these arguments are true.

But initially it's wise to take them with a grain of salt.

But make sure that salt is made from a source that complies with your countries regulations on salt manufacturing and labeling...

Iodine in salt is also normal in Europe. I think mandatory in at least a few countries, possibly the whole EU.

Sometimes who gets to make the rules is far more important than what the rules are.

This is profound.

Cars of the same model made for different markets have varying safety features. US destination Japanese cars have better crash protection than those made for their domestic market.

In this particular case it's not even a matter of safety: pasta with <13 mg/lb of iron is no more or less safe than pasta with >13 mg/lb, and as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans). If anything, mandatory enrichment seems like an arbitrary trade barrier imposed on the US side to protect what the article calls "Big Pasta" from foreign interlopers.

> as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans)

"Iron deficiency isn't an issue, probably because there's lots of enriched foods, so let's stop enriching food!"

I think regulatory analysis requires a little more thought than that.

The fact that European pasta isn't enriched and we don't have iron deficiency issues gives a good hint, so.

Different regions have diets made up of different ingredients, which have different levels of various minerals. Humans don't all eat the exact same thing and they don't all exist in the same exact climate so regulations tend to be curated to their local constituents.

Furthermore, in many European nations the pasta is enriched, mainly with fiber although plenty of other nutrients are added depending on the brand and market. European countries just don't have regulations regarding "enriched macaroni" labeling like the US, which is an interesting historical quirk but irrelevant to what's actually in the pasta. Popular brands like Barilla are almost certainly enriched with something - depending on the size of the market it might have been enriched to American standards just to minimize manufacturing fragmentation (i.e. Italy, a huge consumer of pasta and origin of many of the brands will have formulas dedicated to that market, while Norway will receive whatever other formula is closest to their requirements).

I'm not even opposed to iron enrichment for the basic flour used to make Wonderbread-type cheap staples, but mandating it for fancy imported bucatini seems more than a little ridiculous.

"Standards of Identification" are not about safety, but rather marketplace regulation against deception. After all, if it was about safety, then ramen noodles wouldn't be sold at all.

Rather, it is (or was, originally) about protecting the brand of pasta noodles vs. ramen noodles, at a time when the difference was not as readily apparently to consumers.

It's the type of regulation that determines what is a "HD" tv, for example.

The article literally describes this.

> It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard?

We don't need to wonder! They explain it right in the article: protectionism. It's not really that surprising that a lot of regulations have nothing to do with protecting the consumer and are all about protecting the parties that really matter to governments: big domestic industries.

> Around World War II, Carl explained, the established noodle industry (henceforth referred to as Big Pasta) was “upset” by the introduction of Nissin’s ramen noodles into the country, which were “completely out of spec” with what the United States then recognized as noodles — specifically because the ramen was being sold for a lower price and with what Carl called “lower standards” of nutrition. “They were really pressed,” said Carl. That’s when the “standards of identity” were created: Big Pasta made sure that all noodles had to meet certain specifications to be considered “enriched macaroni products” and sold in the United States.

“Standards of Identity” are not in and of themselves a bad thing. If a product comes to market claiming to be one thing but it is not, it may damage the market for all other products. Imagine a tv manufacturer claiming to sell a HD tv that is not HD, for example.

In this case, the pasta industry did not want their product confused with the new noodles coming from Nissin; this was back in the days when many Americans may not have readily known the difference between pasta noodles and ramen noodles, and wondered why they were paying more for pasta than they could for ramen.

Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do.

Alternatively, it might be the fact that the pasta company in question was selling buccatini at a lower price, a competitor did an analysis, and they found that this company was saving money by skirting regulation that everyone else is complying with. And they did the right thing by forcing the FDA to apply the rules evenly to all companies.

> Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do.

Agreed. I'm not saying there's no rational underpinning to regulation, just that it's frequently gamed by bad actors, almost to the point that the original intent is forgotten.

That's the importance of regulatory harmonisation. Eg your laptop charger is probably covered in 20 different indecipherable logos showing compliance with every countries regulators, all of whom have standards at least 99.9% identical. The EU has harmonised regulations internally in order to make completely free trade work, so a single 'CE' logo is enough to show compliance for the entire EU.

Regulatory harmonisation is controversial though, especially here in UK. No matter that its usually boring stuff like agreeing fire retardant coatings on soft furnishings, the newspapers insisted this was a breach of sovereignty. Expect a new British safety standard (identical but with a different logo) to join the pack.

I’m really looking forward to a pile of reduced-safety standards from the people who gave us the Grenfell disaster...

Note that there is the CE symbol (confirmation of Europan standards) and there is also a very simila CE symbol that means "China Export". The second one does not have anything to do with European standards. It is deceptively similar.. guess why

Wikipedia says the European Commission says this is an urban legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export I mean I don't know anything about it, just wanted to point that out.

But then this one https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H... says it's real, I'm confused.

Edit: I'm going to go through every single device/cable I have at home and examine the font and the arrangement of the two letters now, the C and the E need to be on two circles that overlap by exactly the width of the lines.

Isn't it trademark infringement either way? If you tried this with the apple logo and your business was us based you'd be sued out of existence.

I speculate that this logo is mostly used for "cheap crap" where they stamp any random logo you want.

Also if you sell the "cheap crap" to some country outside of EU, you can still slap the nice CE logo there.

And since when shady Chinese companies care about copyrights anyway.

I think part of the puzzle is why they would cheat by stamping a logo that is almost right but not quite. Is it that their level of honesty such that they wouldn't cheat regulations but would cheat a trademark? Maybe they themselves can't tell which logo is the correct one so they just stamp anything?

>I think part of the puzzle is why they would cheat by stamping a logo that is almost right but not quite. Is it that their level of honesty such that they wouldn't cheat regulations but would cheat a trademark?

Maybe it's a lie that they tell themselves so they can sleep better at night. It's not unlike how "sovereign citizens" believe in various flawed legal arguments to justify how they don't have to pay taxes.

Do you know if there’s an accurate master list of these labels anywhere? I’m sure the customs and border people must have at least a reference copy floating around.

Regulation isn't made just by health/safety perspective, but includes cultural, social and others.

For example, Katsuobushi is the core part of Japanese food but it seems that exporting to Europe is difficult due to EU regulation. Another example in Japan would be K-car.

As a Japanese, I never want to give up Katuobushi for improving health. I suspect that maybe oppositely, European people also has food or culture that banned from other country .

https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/

The article you linked makes it rather clear that the reason for banning imports has nothing to do with culture but with the carcinogens in the product. The Spanish factory uses a safer smoking process.

I think Germany and the Netherlands have some similar vehicles to the K-car, but not sure they are the same from a regulation point of view

Some Kei-cars were and are sold in Europe, but they are regulated the same as any other car, rather than having specific tax and regulatory advantages like they do in Japan.

This also means that the European variants don't have to meet the kei-car regulations regarding size, engine capacity or power output, so some of them are a bit bigger or have more powerful engines.

Wasabi is impossible to get in the USA, my understanding was that this was because of Japan's rules rather than those if the USA. We just have horseradish with green food coloring in the USA.

It's not impossible, it's just expensive to import and difficult to store. Higher end sushi places would usually have it. Now there are at least two farms in the US producing it that I know of, one in Washington state, and another in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco, and there's even some retail distribution now in SF.

That is very exciting! My old karate instructor owned a sushi restaurant and I got the strong impression that the mob looked poorly on attempts to export. He may have been exaggerating.

It seems that regulations are often a little more lax on products produced domestically.

Can we trust states with major pharmaceutical industries to regulate pharmaceuticals? Major car production centres to regulate emissions? Major chemicals companies to regulate chemicals?

I'd be a little suspicious, living next to such a country, if they insist on my adopting the regulations they wrote, which of course their industries all successfully meet to the letter.

> Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer.

It's true that they don't make much sense and that they often harm the consumer, but I vote in my regional politicians and in theory can vote them out if they impose standards I don't like.

One of the problems with Europe was the perceived lack of democratic control coupled with the dishonesty from anti_EU campaigners about things like straight bananas.

The problem is that unless the bad regulation is hurting everyone a lot the regulations will be around for 10-50yr after you vote them out.

I work for an automotive manufacturer that has a model that couldn’t be sold in the United States due to its lack of a steering column airbag (probably along with other items). It has led to an aggressive destruction of imported vehicles by customs officials and seizing of legal vehicles due to mistaken identity.

I don’t care for this, but I understand it. Rarely do we hear about the lives that were saved thanks to the regulatory body doing its job.

Because we don't have a world government so every government can do what they want.

Even ignoring protectionism there are a billion different ways to make reasonable regulations and many of them will be incompatible in some ways.

Countries working together on regulations is a thing, but it also does slow down things and takes a lot of effort.

>Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system?

I don't see any way how that could work out any better than the current situation.

Aerospace goy pretty close, with EASA and the FAA accepting each others certification. Until the FAA blew the 737 MAX and everyone had to show how tough they are. And because the FAA did screw up.

And in Brazil the certification caught the problem... Not accepting each other certification with blind eyes can be a good thing.

Couldn't agree more! Even just conducting double checks on others certification would do a lot of good.

I wonder how many Embraers pass Brazil certification but fail FAA/EASA.

> Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system?

Global systems are inherently more fragile, no? More eyes on something is always a good thing, less likely to be corrupted by corporate interests, etc...

Different product, but eggs make an interesting example of why:

Both USA and UK markets take steps to avoid salmonella. The method the USA requires the eggs to be refrigerated, the method the UK uses effectively requires that they are not (at least not until you get them home, once you start you can’t stop).

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...

How is Boeing Max safe for Americans but it crashes elsewhere?

This was just luck. An aircraft with a special randomly-initiate-death-plunge function will crash somewhere first and somewhere else second. If the public is stupid enough to keep flying in it, eventually it will crash all over the place. In this case, the flying public decided that two horrible crashes was enough.

Look up the blancolirio channel on YouTube, specifically the Max episodes and you'll how close we came to crashing them here.

As mentioned later in the article, the offending requirement likely isn’t a safety thing, but a 1940s era protectionist thing.

Different doesn't mean one is better or worse.

You get objections to GMO food in Europe while in the US this doesn't even have to be labelled.

Chocolate standards that mean most US chocolate cannot legally be called chocolate in Europe as it doesn't contain enough cocoa.

Chicken has to be chlorine washed in the US before sale, a practice that is prohibited in Europe.

Eggs in the US are washed before sale which makes it necessary to keep them in the fridge afterwards while in Europe eggs are nornally sold unwashed (in some countries (all EU?) It's even prohibited to wash them).

Let's not even talk standards for wine and raw milk cheese, use of corn syrup, regional denominations, slaughter and animal welfare rules, ...

Not easy to find a simple resolution to such strong differences in some sectors. Opposition to trade deals among Europeans usually stem from (1) fears of lower food standards (incl. animal welfare), (2) worries about slavery and labour exploitation and (3) worries about low environmental standars. I'm sure the US has similar recurring themes popping up.

The article mentions the fact that the FDA calls all legal pasta "enriched macaroni."

The article also mentions trade groups pressuring the FDA to set arbitrary standards on pasta to keep out imports of Asian noodles.

The article fails to mention what the FDA calls Asian noodle products.

It calls them "alimentary paste."

That must be a formal legal term, although it is certainly appropriate:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alimentary

"Of, or relating to food, nutrition or digestion."

"Nourishing; nutritious."

(At least the first part; "extruded alimentary paste" would be a more precise description of noodles.)

The point isn't whether the word "alimentary" means anything. You probably know related words like "alimony." (Tangentially, the humorous novel Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera is a surprising early precursor to Fantastic Voyage and related stories of microscopic explorers inside the human body.)

The point is that calling any food product "alimentary paste" is hilariously unappetizing.

'Paste' is an old word for pastry, too. It makes old recipes rather odd sounding [1]:

> make six or eight ounces of paste as No. 319, roll it to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, or a little more, put pudding-cloth in a basin, sprinkle some flour over it, lay in your paste, and then the meat, together with a few pieces of fat; when full put in three wineglasses of water; turn the paste over the meat, so as not to form a lump, but well closed; then tie the cloth

And who could resist paste pudding [2]?

[1] http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/beefpudding.htm

[2] http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/pastepudding.htm

When I was a kid, one of my classmates loved to eat library paste:

http://www.letterology.com/2012/06/please-dont-eat-library-p...

Another classmate ate earthworms. I was so enraged by this that I tried to bite his ear off. Fortunately I did not succeed.

Fun fact: "pasta" literally means "paste" in Italian (and most languages from Latin).

As does the French pâté. And yet, in English, they suggest very different foods.

Pasta, pastry, paste, pasty. All related words. The French for pastry is pâte. Pâté means "pasted" as in "pasted fish".

The French aliment simply means food, although it's not spoken very often in France. The word exists in English but it's quite rare and normally used in legal contexts like so many other words of French origin.

The Dutch word 'tandapasta' has always amused me no end. (toothpaste)

Just ‘tandpasta’ :)

Related: the part of cheese that's not the rind is called the paste.

It is apparently a more precision definition for noodle (it's a historical term, _pasta alimentaria_) https://www.britannica.com/topic/pasta

It must be made from wheat, but can be with or without eggs, and with or without dairy product. But it must be formed/extruded and dried.

TIL

> enriched macaroni

That must be the lamest way of defining pasta I've ever heard. Whoever named it like that doesn't deserve italian pasta (/s)

And awkward as hell too. Maccheroni is a shape of pasta, but apparently all pasta is "enriched macaroni" in the US?

Yes. Spaghetti is a type of enriched macaroni, according to the FDA.

Kiełbasa and Pierogi are whole classes of products but in US kiełbasa is a particular kind of Polish sousage and pierogi basically means ruskie pierogi.

That's how foreign languages work. In Polish "rower" means "a bicycle" because british company Rover sold them here first :) In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal :)

>In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal

You can't be serious. Post proof.

There's competing theories but all come from Vauxhall. Either train station or gardens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall#In_the_Russian_langua...

Thanks

>In Polish "rower" means "a bicycle" because british company Rover sold them here first

Wait really?! I'm learning Polish and I was wondering about this.

Another fun one: the word for "marker" (i.e., a felt-tipped pen for drawing) is "фломастер," from the brand Flo-Master.

Although, given the way things are going, it wouldn't surprise me if the word was now "шарпи."

Surprisingly, the art supply brand Caran d'Ache is from the Russian "карандаш" and not vice versa.

The Ukrainian for "pencil" simply comes from the word for the metal tin, which, like lead metal, was in use for styluses used in drawing before the discovery of graphite.

In Polish: "flamaster" (thin marker for writing) vs "marker" (thick semitransparent marker for highlighting text).

And pencil is "ołówek" (ołów = lead).

"Macaroni" is a very old synonym for "pasta". It used to have a different broader meaning than the shape.

In (Brazilian) Portuguese, all pasta is called "macarrão", no doubt from the old Italian word

E.g. the French "macaron" comes from this Italian word.

To add a couple more examples; in polish "Makaron" is all pasta (same as above), while in German "Nudeln" (noodles) is also synonymous with all pasta (even maccaroni!).

Probably a case of semantic narrowing.

Fitting for a yankee doodle dandy, though.

> It calls them "alimentary paste."

Citation?

The article doesn't mention "alimentary paste" anywhere, so your remark comes off as assertive, yet I couldn't find traceability to this term in what I believe to be the applicable federal statute[1].

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?node=pt21.2.139&rgn=di...

A google search with terms like site:fda.gov alimentary paste might help. The person you're responding to is not making this up.

I am afraid this article will resurrect shortage even if it ended lately: I never cared about pasta shapes, but now I want bucatini. With 52 hacker news points there goes national stock of bucatini.

I really want some now, too. :/

Yeah, with the amount they talked about extra sauce absorption in the article, I now have a very strong desire to try it myself...

I found that comment kind of odd, since the real king of sauce absorption is spaghetti rigati - spaghetti with ridges.

Bucatini has good sauce absorption but imho its claim to fame is its thickness, mouthfeel, and rigidity, which the author hilariously and accurately refers to as "sentient". It has a mind of its own.

There are two similar noodle shapes, pici and Strozzapreti (literally "priest stranglers") but they are even harder to find.

You can just make your own! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuWNKMy2yKA&t=239

The curse-blessing of getting to the top of HN has jumped the digital-physical barrier.

Which is more likely:

Error 404: Bucatini not found.

MySQL Error: cannot get connection to deliver Bucatini.

/me shows self out

...or Http 420 / 429 slow down consumption requests for bucatini

We might repurpose "418 I'm a teapot", now with bucatini power.

303 See Other Pasta Shapes

307 Temporary Redirect of Bucatini Deliveries

Bucatini has gone away

If you have a wegmans in your area, they might have it. I found some last night actually :)

Wegmans is a no-go where I live, thanks to an old 'handshake agreement' between the Wegman and Golub families, in that there would be no overlap between Wegmans and Price Chopper territory. :(

I'll have to check Hannaford and Shoprite instead.

People don't seem to take action based on these things. I was concerned about not being able to buy vitamin D because of so many articles positively correlating it with good COVID-19 outcomes... but had no trouble buying it recently.

I'm not sure why this article is being published now (dated December 28, 2020) if the shortage was really in March. It doesn't seem like it's still an issue. Amazon has tons of bucatini for sale, many available in a day with Prime: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bucatini

You can begin with that recipe: [0] :)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6ddIzPy0k

Or this one :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0cA8aoOno

Semi related: there was a major shift in pasta market during 2004 EU extension. To comply with EU regulations, companies from newly joining countries had to invest large sums to switch to a different type of wheat to keep producing. Malma (biggest Polish pasta company) took a big credit for this, unfortunately they took it in a subsidiary of an Italian bank, whose CEO was also a chairman of Barilla. The bank soon demanded instant full repayment of the credit, which bankrupted Malma.

Big Pasta is as bad as any other big industry.

Edit: as the comment below says, there were other factors at play around same time (reduced demand from Russia and interest rates spike) contributing.

this story does not sound accurate. if Malma truly had good finances before this, it could simply take out another loan at a different bank, who would presumably look at Malma's true finances and ignore this fake immediate payment. it is standard for major companies to renew their loans at different financial institutions at different rates, and a single call bankrupting a company would mean that the company was already in dire shape. this is consistent with https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/facts..., which says that the bank claims that the company was managed poorly, and the management claims that it was caused by reduced Russian demand as well as increased interest rates.

This type of back and forth with real fact checking is exactly what I come to hacker news for. Well done!

Thx for the comment.

The story is still more complex than this. Basically Malma had a few credits already, then Pekao proposed a unifying credit + to help with the IPO as a way to get funds for expansion, but the IPO never happened.

Perhaps the timing of all those things was bad and company was too ambitious with expansion plans. But there are a few details about the bank behavior that feel off. If the company was in hopeless situation, why the bank offered the credit at all? I guess we'll never know all the accurate details.

Hey folks,

European chiming in here. If you are serious about bucatini, shoot me a DM and we can discuss importing that precious golden Ambrosia into the US of A, maybe declared as 'alimentary paste', drinking straw - or even use 'the Mexican route' to import it, if you know what I mean.

I have to go now, my pasta is ready.

HN doesnt support DM, I think you should put your email or Twitter handle in your profile :)

And note that the "email" field in your profile is not public. If you want to share your email, you need to put it in the "about" section.

Set up a vendor on the dark web. “Top notch buca. Excellent stealth.”

If I have to turn state's witness, please let it be about pasta...

Next time someone asks me what is cryptocurrency even good for, this is my new go-to response

To be clear, when I say 'bucatini pipeline' I am referring to the elaborate method of import, rather than a pipeline made of bucatini.

In much the same way that the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is not actually a tunnel made of burritos.

Why not both? Transport a thinner bucatino inside a wider one

An interesting example of how a completely uninteresting topic can be made interesting by a good writer.

That's true, right? All in all it's just pasta. I'm Italian so I it got my attention. I thought I would never have gone through all the article but in the end, that's exactlt what happened.

It seems like she had fun writing it too - so also an example of how a boring assignment can be made interesting!

What I love about this story is that this is the tension of politics in a nutshell. What has happened here is what people would term "state capture", where someone uses the state to gain an advantage. Probably though, the solution is to not _completely_ demolish any standard of pasta and let the market solely decide, because we've seen what happens in a variety of other unregulated industries. However, I won't make my stand on any solution here: I'm more of a polenta person honestly.

It's a true problem that requires nuance, or lacking that, constant vigilance to make sure the system works for everyone. I'm realizing more and more that there will never be a political promised land, a polity will always have to perform the maintenance of their system, and every generation will have to actively work to bend their systems toward justice.

What I find most interesting is that the standard is defined in nutritional value, not in terms of ingredients (x percent flour, up to y percent egg, something like that).

> Probably though, the solution is to not _completely_ demolish any standard of pasta and let the market solely decide, because we've seen what happens in a variety of other unregulated industries.

A few relevant anecdotes on this topic:

About a decade ago, a Dutch TV-show about food standards discovered that store-bought "guacamole" contains just 1% avocado powder. Presumably the legal standard for guacamole is that it contains avocado, without further specification. So obviously supermarkets, knowing that most Dutch people there haven't a clue what guacamole is, created the cheapest sauce imaginable.

Another story: the process of standardizing chocolate at the EU level was a long one because each country had different national standards. The biggest talking point, IIRC, was whether or not it was acceptable to use non-cocoa fat (keep in mind that adding fat from other sources would often be cheaper). Note that whichever option would be picked, the chocolate industries of the nations with the "opposing" regulation felt like they would lose:

- if added fat was allowed, the chocolate from countries where this wasn't allowed nationally would be more expensive and have trouble competing

- if added fat wasn't allowed, the chocolate from countries where this was the norm could not be exported

Another anecdote:

Subway bread cannot be technically called “bread” in Ireland because there is too much added sugar in it. Ruled by their supreme court:

https://text.npr.org/919831116

More to the point, it can’t be treated as bread (VAT exempt) for VAT purposes. This stuff happens a lot with VAT; for instance see the Jaffa Cakes biscuit or cake thing.

I have never had bucatini, but of course thanks to this article now it's all I want.

Very good stealth marketing

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

It’s hard to imagine any writer who pitched doing a piece like this to the marketing department of a pasta company not just being told to fuck off. If it was possible to make money writing articles like this, there would be a lot more of them.

Though it's hard to write this well

It's not hard, it just takes a long time, which costs $$$. That's why it's very very unlikely to be sponsored, because no CPG company is going to spend 100k to commission a writer to spend several months working on an art piece. Except maybe Red Bull, but this isn't about Red Bull.

>It's not hard, it just takes a long time....

James Lord, biographer, to Alberto Giacometti, while watching the artist draw him: "It looks so easy." Giacometti: "It is easy. All it takes is a lifetime."

Is that the going rate nowadays for a competent investigative writer? I thought the major conglomerates also commission these ‘art pieces’ at a decent rate.

I don’t recall ever having it until reproducing a Hello Fresh recipe that we had previously eaten and wanted to make from scratch. My daughter is a budding foodie and wondered if we could find the bucatini. I aired her what that was and she said it was the type of pasta in the dish (that I had eaten) and that they were like noodle straws.

I bought the last box at Kroger somewhat intrigued. It took a bit longer than spaghetti to cook, and honestly I didn’t find it particularly interesting. Just a fat noodle that wasn’t particularly good at holding on to the sauce.

it's worth trying but: it's not THAT good of an experience, it's kind of hard to eat because of the hole.

I'm Italian, but I've never been that partial to bucatini, I'm more in the spaghetti or rigatoni camp myself. My niece would kill for them, but I think that her being seven and liking "strange pastas" like ruote and such has something to do with it.

If you get it, try a cacio e pepe recipe. Also, to temper expectations, the article really oversells it.

Yeah, it is a tube form of the same old pasta that's in spaghetti. I don't understand the fuss. It's actually not great. Try getting cooking water out of them. I would go with rotini or radiatore if I really needed the surface area otherwise a ribbon pasta like fettucine or tagliatelle, almost every time. Not a fan.

I bought it by mistake once -- or because the supermarket was out of spaghetti and it looked "close enough", as you couldn't see the hole from the packet -- and I can't say I was impressed. I feel I may have overcooked it though; it had a similar texture to udon noodles, which didn't really work with whatever it was I was making.

I'm glad someone else noticed it.

During the height of the first pandemic wave in Canada, I literally couldn't find Bucatini anywhere, specifically De Cecco which IMO is superior to some other brands where I live. I went to dozens of supermarkets and they had every variant of pasta except Bucatini and I really couldn't understand what the heck was going on.

Looks like it's had pretty good availability on amazon.ca, but OOS for the last month:

https://ca.camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07N21XB55

but like 5x the price on .com

https://www.amazon.com/Molisana-Italian-Bucatini-oz-Pkgs/dp/...

I just bought some for pickup at target.com. Their Good & Gather brand Bucatini [1] is available in a couple of stores in the East Bay Area (Alameda, Albany). I hope you can find some locally.

1. https://www.target.com/p/signature-bucatini-16oz-good-38-gat...

De Cecco is an expensive brand in Italy. When I'm abroad I don't buy anything but. Barilla will do if De Cecco is missing though.

It’s an interesting reminder that a lot of simple staples in the US are fortified with various nutrients. It almost transforms your view such that it’s less you buying food, and more the government providing your provisions so that you’re a healthy worker. I found myself recalling an article on Britain’s National Loaf.

A very good friend of mine moved to Texas a year ago from Europe. Every time she visits, she is astonished that grocery shopping at discounters in Germany ends up being healthier that when she tries to get "healthy" groceries in the US. No idea if this holds true, but I had the same impression vacationing in New York (obviously not representative). I do see quality differences between German and French supermarkets as well, with quality in France being better.

I largely prefer not enriched food, including salt. It just tastes better, IMHO.

I found the premise of this odd. I also live in Brooklyn and have had no issues finding bucatini this year. It's consistently in stock at my nearby whole foods.

I would read your rebuttal article.

Strangely, one of the first pasta casualties we noticed in Singapore was bucatini disappearing from the shelves here as well. Which has nothing to do with the FDA issue brought up in the article, but probably has to do with the comment in the article that pasta makers were reducing the output of less popular SKUs...hoping bucatini makes a comeback in 2021!

It is a wonderful pasta, but doesn't really surprise me that there could be a shortage as it isn't necessarily a pasta that every grocery store will carry. In my own little community (founded by Italians...), there's only one place that carries it with any regularity anyway.

> “FDA is quite slow to take action involving standards violations. I’m speculating that a competitor put some heavy pressure on FDA,”

Or the enrichment material supplier that the pasta-maker cut back on. Or pasta-maker switched flour suppliers to a cheaper under-enriched source.

Which makes me wonder what exactly the FDA is doing if it doesn't regularly test food for quality and safety?

Vaccines!

But seriously, they do inspect a lot of drug manufacturing facilities, even overseas.

As a Canadian, I trust their approvals more than Health Canada's. I suspect Health Canda just copies whatever the FDA does a few weeks later.

Dunno why either haven't banned addictive substances (cigarettes) and let the non-addictive but fun ones get a free ride. But ya know.

Unfortunately oversight may not always be so great, especially for generics: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/12/7222165...

I never said it was good, but the FDA seems to be doing the most.

Whatever the source, clearly someone along the line was looking to get enriched

I can buy 20 pounds on Amazon for $40. I wish the author had addressed this solution to his perceived shortage. Is this some bad brand? Are all these brands sucky? Did the author forget to google for mail order pasta? Did all these companies in Italy not work out for him?

This journalist needs a journalist friend to help cover his story.

Her.

The point of the article is in the writing more than the actual subject matter.

I suppose, but couldn’t the author write about how her favorite pasta is actually available through mail order?

> 20 pounds of pasta for $40

That's around €3.60/kg, which is considered in Italy a quick way to get street riots. Go over €4/kg and you'll get a full blown revolution, complete with a fully functional guillotine.

In my local supermarket 500g of bucatini De Cecco come for €.99, which is around $1.22. I understand that pasta in considered a specialty on the other side of the pond, but it is still basically just (semolina) flour and water, and no matter how fancy it could be, it's outrageous to pay that much for something mass produced.

Barilla sells for $1.25 to $1.50 for 454 grams (1 lb) in the US; that's getting close to $2 per lb. De Cecco is premium stuff here. I've seen $4 per lb, which is like $9 per kg.

Barilla is also one of the more generic and blander pastas; once you switch to the higher end, bronze extruded brands, it gets immeediately clear why they cost more. It's still better than some non-Italians brands that are made in normal wheat flour instead of durum wheat semolina, and look so pale and dull they maks you wonder why you didn't cook rice instead.

I agree, but I think many dry goods are poorly priced on Amazon as they are sold by arbitragers taking advantage of people who don’t know or care.

There were many better prices available, but I was just sanity checking the author who wrote lots and lots making it sound like her favorite pasta was unavailable. So I want trying to find an optimal prices just trying to see if it’s actually unavailable (it isn’t).

At my local market pasta is usually $.7-1/pound. And if I go to specialty markets or Whole Foods the price can get 2-5x higher.

Hilarious writing, and a very intriguing investigation into this mystery!

"I was also slightly worried that I had inadvertently made myself a target of Big Pasta."

This could be the hottest Netflix drama of 2021.

10USD/kg bucatini + 10 USD shipping anywhere in the US

contact link in description!

sincerely, anonymous dealer seeking revenge for all those "badabibuppi" Family Guy and Soprano memes.

I would have assumed that dry pasta of different shapes was produced with the same dough just extruded through the different dies. So a question is, does De Cecco actually use a complying dough for its other pasta shapes, and the FDA checked and blocked the only noncompliant product? Or is the stage set for there to be a shortage of cavatappi next month?

Great article, but I have to admit I'm a bit surprised by the adoration here: I've on occasion accidentally bought bucatini when I wanted spaghetti, and was mostly annoyed by the tubes squirting out hot water when I tried to eat them like they were spaghetti. Any bucatini-optimized pasta recipes to recommend?

Do you finish the pasta in the sauce? That helps coat the pasta in the sauce, both inside and out.

Basically take the pasta out of the water a few minutes early, put it in a pan with the sauce and some of the pasta cooking water, and finish cooking it there.

Bucatini alla amatriciana or bucatini alla carbonara. But I'm not sure if you will be able to find Guanciale (a derivate of pork jowl or cheeks) and Pecorino cheese. You can replace Guanciale with cubes of -smoked- bacon (please forgive me italian readers) and Pecorino with Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (that should be more easier to find).

Important: as shared by other HN users, remember to put the pasta out of hot water a couple of minutes before the cooking time and stir it on a hot pan with the sauce for the last 2 minutes. Make sure to add also a few tablespoons of the hot (salted) water you used to cook the pasta, this helps to make the cream effect.

If available, anything marked “Pancetta” will suit better than smoked bacon. They are not the same thing.

Guanciale is pretty much impossible to find outside of Italy, at least in regular supermarkets. I reckon it’s because nobody can pronounce it

Does this mean Bucatini shortage is a good indicator of wide-spread issues? Seems like its time for Bucatini index.

It seems like a major brand changed flour suppliers, falling under the FDA-required amount of iron, and thus not being allowed to import it. I don't think that is indicative of any wider issues, except that the government might be interfering with your food a little bit too much.

Amazing, well-written, entertaining and informative. A worthy read.

One takeaway: Barilla, which was once vilified for a perceived anti-gay stance (based on one offhand comment) has completely embraced human rights and now gets a perfect score from important institutions on LGBTQ issues. I'll buy their pasta again.

It must be exhausting to shop. You have to analyze and scrutinize each brand and determine if they meet the current requirements of the day. Is there an up-to-the-minute app or hotline one can use to check every brand of every product one purchases in real time at the shop?

Cute. No, I just heard about their intolerance and veer slightly to the right to a different brand when facing the shelf. Not exhausting at all.

Similarly I quit going to Chick Fil A. At first I'd just ask the clerk "Is this a hateful message day? I don't want to be seen as endorsing your company's hateful message." But the poor clerk didn't know how to answer, so I just walk to another shop (next door) instead. Again, no effort.

But are you aware of the political and cultural opinions of the owners of the brand you bought instead?

For what it’s worth, I bought bucatini at Zabar’s a little bit over two months ago — but I had to ask! :-)

Fun article but I can’t seem to match their excitement for the cut... to me it’s just spaghetti that’s much harder to slurp on account of it being a straw.

A feature for anyone in your vicinity..!

And for the linens and clothes in the vicinity! Slurping is so messy with heavy sauces

Wow, she began by prodding Big Pasta to explain the shortage, and ended up by instigating a review of Macaroni (meaning All Pasta) standard for import. She may have actually ended the import of Bucatini from DeCecco permanently!

The Rule of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head.

It sounded more like they want to put the US and EU(and elsewhere) standards in line with each other so that pasta can more freely move around to world.

Which may mean the EU changing, or the US changing. Further together or further apart, who knows. A likely outcome of disruption is, further glitches. But lets keep our fingers crossed!

This article is FANTASTIC. Maximum style points, and worthwhile content - for both entertainment and in pragmatic terms.

Bucatini I can frankly take or leave.

But when gemelli disappeared for several months I was distraught. Nothing is better in mac'n'cheese.

I make it in a cake pan, less than an inch deep, with sourdough cubes and grated cheese on top, toasted to a crisp. The mac really is just there to hold up the cheese toast. But that doesn't stop me from putting in chopped chili peppers (not too much, 2 oz is plenty!), nutmeg, and a hint of cayenne.

Strozzapreti can substitute for gemelli, but it is even harder to find any of.

Calabrian chilis sound promising

Chick-fil-A Mac'N'Cheese a solid stand-in if you don't have the energy...

Thanks, I have not once set foot in a Chick-fil-A. Now I am curious.

Bonus: No need to set foot: most have drive-thru windows

For anyone unaware, the "enriched" and lack of iron being a problem is based on FDA regulations developed before WWII which is required by the FDA on certain foodstuffs in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronutrient_Fortification_Pr...

Unrelated, but is it just me, or is this website sneakily adding tracking links? If I mouse-over or right click -> copy link, I get the correct url, but if I left click on it uBlock blocks a tracking/redirect link using https://go.redirectingat.com/

Very interesting article.

I was quite perplexed, since I have never heard of Bucatini before, but know some sorts of pasta - at least the most popular ones. Turns out, that in Germany, these are called "Makkaroni"! (We call macaroni "Makkaroni" too)

I went through this a few months ago. I found some at Kroger. I missed this pasta from my youth years in Europe.

Just to clear it up, the point of the hole isn't because holes are great or because they absorb sauce better or anything like that.

The point is just to get really thick spaghetti.

If you were to attempt this without a hole, when the outside was ready to eat, the inside would still be unpleasantly crunchy. Or, if you cooked further to get to the point where the inside was properly al dente, the outside would be an overcooked mess.

The only way to produce a thick, properly-cooked piece of spaghetti of consistent, uh, consistency is to remove the part in the center.

Is American food enriched too much?

COVID had really highlighted how unhealthy our diet is...

Bucatini is the best pasta shape, though. Comedy always has that grain of truth in it. If you can somehow get past the great bucatini shortage of 2020, make some cacio e pepe with it. Trust me.

“Carl’s contact did not reply, and when I called them, their phone number did that fuzzy-dial-up thing where it sounded like someone signing into AOL in 1995.”

This, I believe, is a fax machine answering your call.

I just used some bucatini when making Cacio e Pepe last night.

I have been able to purchase the store brand of bucatini at my local Harris Teeter without interrupt this past year. The brand is Private Selection. I don't know who makes it for them but it is imported from Italy. Harris Teeter is owned by Kroger and my understanding is the brand is available across all the Kroger owned grocery chains.

Why does the FDA mix the metric and imperial measurement system (mg/lb)? Are there other examples (liters per mile?) that people know of?

I usually hear metric for nutritional measurements and imperial for bulk food measurements so I am assuming that’s what’s going on

No group of people uses the SI system 100%, everyone just uses what is convenient (scientists use lightyears, and europeans use km/h, not m/s). The same is true of how americans use their system. There isn't an old unit convenient for small weights of this scale, even carat is too rough, so they use mg.

I don't know of any other examples of it being mixed quite like this, but I do see pressures given in "mm Hg" sometimes.

I jumped ship to Linguine, the flatness also holds more sauce than rounder non hollow pasta i find.

Cooking Bucatini was proving too hard for me, and it doesn't drain well.

Pasta was my staple, but has become sometimes-food now, its too easy to put on weight.

De Niro is said to have wolfed down linguine to pork himself up for the La Motta role in "Raging Bull"

I'm very skeptical about the claim of bucatini holding more sauce, because the hole is on the inside, and the sauce is on the outside.

Broken up maybe? Long lengths, I'd agree.

Imagine a world where the FDA’s Oxycontin response was as decisive and timely as their pasta nutrition enforcement.

Okay. I just bought Bucatini off of Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YQ7CYWU (only 1 left, blah, blah)). I'm not much of a pasta eater but, damn, that was a fun read...

Whenever any company seemingly supports "regulation" of any sort, it is usually to put a competitor at a disadvantage. This is especially true in zero-sum markets, where any dollar a competitor earns is one dollar less that you earn.

I always hated the expression, but honestly, now I understand: first world problems

The real story behind this article is that the reporter is trying to give bucatini a PR boost and rescue it from its current fate as an unpopular SKU. Mission accomplished? Check back in 10 years.

What are Bucatini? At my place, they have Spaghetti/Spaghettini, Linguine (more porous), Macheroni (pre-cut tubes with large holes to suck up sauce), Penne/Rigatoni/Parpadelle (for Carbonara), Fusilli (or the slightly smaller Girandole) with a lot of surface for Goulash-like sauces, Farfalle (for soups), and German-style pasta like Bandnudeln (Penne with eggs), Schupfnudeln and Spätzle/Knöpfle though the latter are simple to prepare from fresh eggs and flour. Sometimes also Greek Khritaraki (resembling rice) and Trofie Liguri, and of course ready-made Gnocchi, Tagliatelle, and Ravioli.

They are thicker spaghetti with a hole (“buco” in Italian) running through them. Typical of central Italy.

It's one Italian kind of pasta, I think there are more noodle shapes in our country than stars in the sky, probably. Even the lousiest supermarkets in Italy generally have a pasta aisle that's at least 10 metres long.

No shortage here in Washington state, $2.99/box at Safeway, if anyone needs an emergency shipment or something.

This was a rollercoaster. +1 Nicely written!

I had a very hard time finding bucatini back in February in the Austin area. I eventually ordered a box off amazon.

Heard about Bucatini for the first time, went right away to the big Italian supermarket and bought some. Thanks!

tl;dr most pasta brands are pruning lower volume SKUs during the pandemic, and in addition De Cecco is running into some kind of FDA enforcement action against its bucatini because of low iron content.

I havent seen cappellini mentioned, which I often I use for the same reason.

Is cappellini not commonly available in the states?

It's usually called "angel hair" and readily available in my experience.

Is that some plot to sell bucatinis?

I have some bucatinis left, should I put them for auction?

Very interesting and my ignorance shows in that in my fifty odd years of life I have never encountered this type of pasta.

While I understand the writing was aimed more at humor I did succumb to consumerism and went to Amazon and now my curiosity and ignorance both will be corrected

Haha, that was well written article. Highly reccomended reading.

All I can picture are Ferengi tube grubs from Star Trek.

the only thing that baffles me somehow is: do you really get dried pasta shipped all the way from Italy to the US?

Much of my food is imported from Italy... including the December-season Pannettone which dictates Italian provenance to bear the name.

“Do you really get phones shipped all the way from China?”

What’s the problem with specialised goods coming from a country that specializes in making such goods...?

Can somebody post TLDR summary for me? I am curious but do not care about the subject enough finish the article. Was it use as a straws? Or "enriched flour" classification?

Author wants bucatini, Bowen Yang also wants bucatini.

Author contacts lots of people, gets caught up in a potential bucatini conspiracy. Maybe too many millennials used it as straws. Maybe competitors pushed De Cecco out of the country using the FDA guidelines, for reasons to be determined.

Most likely, pasta makers cut production of specialty pasta (bucatini being one) in favour of ramping up production of your run of the mill macaronis, spaghettis, etc. due to COVID and pasta hoarding.

Wait a bit, they'll come back.

Great. Reminds me of the start of a Murakami novel. "I was cooking pasta in the kitchen, and carefully preparing a simple salad, when I noticed the clock in the wall began ticking backward. That wasn't all, outside... "

What novel is that? Sounds very exciting.

oh I mean "reminds me of” as a term including "sounds like"... and was just copying what I think of as Murakami's style and some of his common tropes such as pasta, cooking, strangeness in mundane situations.

If you're interested in reading, I reckon it's safe to read his books in chronolgical order. You can see how his style and preoccupations develop over the years.

The first story I read was "on meeting the 100% perfect girl one April morning" out of a short story collection called "the elephant vanishes" which is not his first book. I was in a bookshop in early 2003 and just randomly looking for the shortest thing I could possibly read and this story got me hooked on Murakami. and then I think after reading that short story book the next thing I read was "hear the wind sing", his original short novel. And then "pinball 1973" and then I think "Norwegian Wood."

I like his sort of loose universe how similar characters and types of characters and tropes kind of return but the the recurrence is not necessarily central to any of the particular stories they're just kind of like motifs.

I see! I was curious what made the clock go backwards, seemed like a very interesting plot element!

Murakami is more magic realism than scifi, so if you're looking for explanations for the weird happenings in his books you often end up out of luck

Agreed. Murakami introduces all sorts of weird / surrealistic / magical elements into stories, but there's rarely if ever any attempt to explain them. They're just part of the fabric of the story.

Magic realism is kind of weird genre. Sort of "in between" in that "magic shit happens, but in our ordinary world, not a world where magic shit happens". That is, magic happens, but not in a Harry Potter'ish or Tolkein'ish world where magic is explicitly part of the world.

All of that said, I love Murakami. Need to finish reading the rest of his novels one of these days.

I remember a feeling of being dreaming while reading the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The plot have the same logic than dreams.

It's certainly not science fiction but I loved it.

What an amusingly accurate comment. I still remember the pasta the main character was making in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at one point.

Was interested until the author included their pitch in the wordcount.

Is there a TL;DR;BCOMGWTF?

If you’re looking for a TL;DR:

People are using bucatini as eco-friendly straws, but uncooked pasta isn’t safe so the FDA temporarily blocked it or something.

The straws theory is mentioned, yes, but the article specifically details how the FDA action was based on the measured iron content of De Cecco's pasta, and it also discusses reasons for scarcity of other manufacturers' bucatini.

More interesting is that the FDA apparently never spot checks these sorts of things, so the claim is Big Pasta has some sort of axe to grind against De Cecco.

The straw theory doesn’t make physical sense. It would take a week to drink a soda through a noodle.

Who said you could only use one noodle strand?

Awful style of journalism. It could be summarized by few sentences: some brands cut production since this is not a popular product and one brand was blocked by FDA since it does not pass the US standard.

Since thr author tries to make a story of what is basic journalism he even invents a (racist?) name for his source just to make the article longer. Luigi? Seriously?

Also standards are standards and the mocking tone of article does not help. We dont learn if that iron level is important or not. Author probably didnt bother to contact any nutritionist / doctor.

Also promotion of a brand sounds a bit like a sponsored article.

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