Frankly, pasta itself is almost certainly fine most of the time, but likely a lot of people's experience of pasta is something like Kraft instant mac and there's a thing about portion sizes, too. My recall of something like basic spaghetti and meatballs as a kid is it tends to be a lot and eat all you want, which ends up being a lot. Whereas if you stick to meat and vegetables, it's very hard to overeat even if enough food is available that you could.
I think some of this ends up being the basis of something like the raw food diet, or the way The Rock has said he eats, which is to never eat anything he actually likes except on cheat days. Enjoyable and cooked foods aren't bad, but if you otherwise can't control yourself, one way to do it is only eat stuff you either don't like or is hard to eat. Even that is largely conflating looking like a model with "health" when they aren't the same thing. When The Rock was a pro wrestler and not an actor, he was noticeably fatter but not to the point that I think it was making any difference in terms of health rather than in terms of his ability to land lead roles in action movies that want you to look like a bodybuilder.