Pasta Doesn’t Make You Fat: Science Says So!

According to a study conducted by St. Michael’s Hospital in Canada, the carbohydrates in pasta do not make you gain weight; in fact, they can be very useful even during a weight-loss diet by helping you lose weight. Pasta has a low glycemic index compared with potatoes, bread and white rice, which means it causes smaller rises in blood sugar levels than those caused by eating foods that have a high level of this index.

Moreover, the carbohydrates in pasta engage the digestive functions for a relatively short time compared with foods with a higher protein and fat content, allowing the liver and kidneys to carry out their cleansing, detoxifying and eliminating operations more quickly.

The people involved in the study ate on average 3.3 servings of pasta a week instead of other carbohydrates. Checks showed that they had lost about half a kilo in 12 weeks. The authors point out that the results can be generalized to pasta eaten together with other low-glycemic-index foods and warn that more research is needed to determine whether the weight loss also applies to pasta as part of other healthy diets.

“The study found that pasta did not contribute to weight gain or to an increase in body fat – says the lead author of the research, John Sievenpiper – In fact the analysis showed a slight weight loss, so contrary to concerns, pasta can be part of a healthy diet such as a low-glycemic-index one”.

Eating pasta is therefore not only appropriate but also advisable in a proper eating regimen, since its use also has important implications for liver, pancreatic and kidney physiology, as well as for modulating the excitability of the central nervous system.

It is useful to eat pasta in the evening because the amino acid tryptophan is involved in the mechanisms that induce sleep, so much so that it is the biochemical precursor of serotonin.

So are you big pasta eaters, or, thinking it will make you gain weight, do you eat little of it?