Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta (buzzfeed.com) 220
Earlier this month, numerous news outlets reported on a study which concludes that eating pasta is good for health. In fact, the reports claimed, eating pasta could help you lose weight. Except, there is more to the story. BuzzFeed News reports: What those and many other stories failed to note, however, was that three of the scientists behind the study in question had financial conflicts as tangled as a bowl of spaghetti, including ties to the world's largest pasta company, the Barilla Group. Over the last decade or so, with the rise of the Atkins, South Beach, paleo, and ketogenic diets, Big Pasta has battled a societal shift against carbohydrates -- and funded and promoted research suggesting that noodles are good for you.
At least 10 peer-reviewed studies about pasta published since 2008 were either funded directly by Barilla or, like the one published this month, were carried out by scientists who have had financial ties to the company, which reported sales of 3.4 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in 2016. For two years, Barilla has publicized some of these studies, plus others favorable to its product, on its website with taglines like "Eat Smart Be Smart...With Pasta" and "More Evidence Pasta Is Good For You." And the company hired the large public relations firm Edelman to push the latest study's findings to journalists.
At least 10 peer-reviewed studies about pasta published since 2008 were either funded directly by Barilla or, like the one published this month, were carried out by scientists who have had financial ties to the company, which reported sales of 3.4 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in 2016. For two years, Barilla has publicized some of these studies, plus others favorable to its product, on its website with taglines like "Eat Smart Be Smart...With Pasta" and "More Evidence Pasta Is Good For You." And the company hired the large public relations firm Edelman to push the latest study's findings to journalists.
please enquote "Scientists" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:please enquote "Scientists" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Scientists cease to be scientists when they don't use proper scientific method.
They become guys in stupid white coats.
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It's really quite absurd to think that unconscious bias has anything whatsoever to do with this.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair
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By itself being funded by pasta or whoever does not disqualify the science or the scientist. The science may be valid. If an interested party thinks there is scientific proof if only one goes looking for it, but nobody else is interested in investigating then in principle it is ok to do the investigation. The results of the research can be validated and reviewed on their own.
In practice the situation is slightly different and a lot of research is worthless only serves a PR operation in someway. For instance
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I like the way you verbed that noun. AFAIK "enquote" isn't a real word. But I guess it is now.
Personally I would have said (or written) "...you should have used quotes around 'Scientists' to indicate..."
To quote Calvin
Verbing weirds language
Re:please enquote "Scientists" (Score:4, Funny)
That's the kind of BS up with which we should not put.
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I like the way you verbed that noun. AFAIK "enquote" isn't a real word. But I guess it is now.
Technically, "quote" is a verb, not a noun. "To quote" is to repeat what someone said. The noun form is "quotation", and the noun for the punctuation is "quotation mark". Both of the nouns are commonly shortened to "quote", though.
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Yes. "Enquote" is a real word. As in, I enquoted "enquote". This could get real recursive, real quick.
My work here is done.
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The study was undoubtedly done by Italians.
I love it if ... (Score:2)
... I can get it pasta my mouf.
Flying Spaghetti Monster (Score:5, Funny)
The blessings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are numerous and provided with great love....and usually a nice sauce.
Blacklist these groups? (Score:3, Insightful)
In an ideal world the Scientists are blacklisted, the research Groups are blacklisted, and the world moves on to "Real Science."
Oh, that's right, we don't have much real science going on, it's almost all corporate driven marketing or self-beneficial now.
Re:Blacklist these groups? (Score:5, Insightful)
This post brought to you by Post-Truth! Working to put uninformed gut feelings on par with history, science, and math since 2016!
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Considering various groups pushing intersectionality have been pushing this hard for the last few years? Sounds about right, so far we've got "feminist math" "black science" demands to "decolonize various STEM fields" and so on. Just remember the rabbit hole isn't what you're looking into, it's already here.
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This post brought to you by Post-Truth! Working to put uninformed gut feelings on par with history, science, and math since 2016!
Meh, the post-truth movement is as old as time itself. Heck even an octopus has figured out that if a clear view of the situation is not to your advantage blot it out with ink. For every situation there's someone willing to believe it's a false flag operation or that the real news are fake. There was no massacre, they're all hired actors. Nobody got assassinated, it's a conspiracy to accuse us. Heck, there's still people who think Holocaust didn't happen despite so many tons of evidence and testimony across
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Oh, that's right, we don't have much real science going on
I wish some scientist would come and do a scientific study on "Confirmation bias among Slashdot ACs". But really that's what we call settled science even without a scientific study.
If you're allergic ... (Score:5, Funny)
... try anti-pasta.
Re:If you're allergic ... (Score:5, Funny)
They no longer sell anti-pasta in my local grocery store after someone mixed up the boxes and put in the same bin as the regular pasta.
The store went out of business shortly thereafter because it became a rapidly expanding cloud of super-heated plasma.
People also left them a lot of bad yelp reviews.
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Fuck
I am familiar with the theory of pasta and anti-pasta, but wow.
You fuddy.
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Instantly reminded me of the Wog Boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Thank you so much for the reference. I had not seen it. I use that line a lot and now I have a audio/visual aid.
Well played. Pun intended.
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I tried to find a longer clip where his date corrects him about what antipasto actually is right before the chef hurls abuse at him saying "when you gonna get a new joke".
But alas Youtube failed me :(
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... try anti-pasta.
<NIT>
anti-pasta - "anti" meaning before as in what you eat before the pasta, because if you don't actually eventually eat pasta later, there is technically no anti-pasta (just like if there was no war, there wouldn't be an antebellum).
So if you are allergic to pasta, you just eat starters (aka antipasti meaning before-the-meal), not anti-pasta, because after eating anti-pasta, you would then be doomed to eat the pasta you were trying to avoid... ;^)
</PICK>
everything in moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
Just eat some pasta, or don't eat some pasta. Unless you're eating pasta three times a day, and nothing else, who the fuck cares. Have some pasta. Have some fruit. Have some vegetables. Have some meat. Don't eat garbage, and don't eat one and only one thing.
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Pasta in moderation, except if you're insulin resistant (like half the US population), and then it's better to not eat it at all.
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But if you eat a bowl of sugar and starch for breakfast aka cereals, a plate of starch like pasta for lunch, and then puffy slice of sugar and starch like a cake for dinner over a longer period of time, your pancreas might not be able to keep up with it for very long. Add the sedentary lifestyle that seems to become ever so
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the catch, of course, is defining "moderation". For most people, lacking a real definition, it winds up working out as "what I'm used to".
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Don't worry. Keep consuming soylent green [wikipedia.org] and one day you'll "satisfy" your wife.
Re: INCORRECT (Score:5, Insightful)
Soylent-only diets are for fools. Nobody knows all the micronutrients humans need for good health. That's one important reason to eat real food.
Your wife's insistence that you share at least one meal with her a week may be keeping you alive.
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I also hear that Soylent gives you awful haunted demon farts, so his wife might just want to eat outside to get some fresh air.
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Uhh, yeah? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only ones who are going to spend big money on researching pasta have some kind of interest in pasta. I'm unaware of any large anti-pasta interest groups so naturally the only remaining group who would fund pasta research are pasta producers. Not like big oil is going to run around researching pasta, and the government is too busy trying to determine how many different genders can be applied to the genus Melocactus.
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Also, it's naive to think the meat industry (which is a much more real and organized thing than "Big Pasta") had no finger in the whole high-meat diet fads thing.
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Cargill produces and controls most of the worlds wheat production. Maybe bigger than most meat producers.
Lose weight (Score:2)
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Hey! I resemble that remark!
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I am not, it is true. But I know people who are. Yes, really.
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Hence all those fat bastards you see in films & photos of Belsen.
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Ok, let me switch to pedantic mode.
You know, 'eat less, move more' as a method of voluntary weightloss, or an expression that human beings can be treated as basic physics test questions, has been discredited for decades. Turns out that if you're overweight, and simply cut calories, your metabolism will slow down to accommodate. You should read further into the current scientific understanding of such things, I suggest Dr. Jason Fung's "The Obesity Code" as an excellent starting off point, which references
Pearls Before Swine ... (Score:2)
... by Stephan Pasta.
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... by Stephan Pasta.
Can't wait for someone to plagiarize Stephan's comic so he can sue them, claiming copypasta [urbandictionary.com].
[ P.S. Love you Elly Elephant [wikia.com] ]
Low-carb = kidney damage (Score:2)
Re:Low-carb = kidney damage (Score:4, Funny)
citation required.
In the mean time, most kidney failure in the US is caused by eating too much carbs.
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citation required.
In the mean time, most kidney failure in the US is caused by eating too much carbs.
So you call out the summary because it doesn't provide a citation for its claim, then you make your own sweeping claim also without citation?
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My claim is not a big secret: https://www.kidney.org/atoz/co... [kidney.org]
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And another one:
> High blood glucose, also called blood sugar, can damage the blood vessels in your kidneys.
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/heal... [nih.gov]
Re:Low-carb = kidney damage (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. When someone makes a claim counter to current understanding and research, it is upon them to provide evidence.
You may not understand that renal failure is primarily caused by type two diabetes, which is primarily caused by a high carb diet without enough exercise, and that is fine. (If you don't understand it, you probably should. It might well prolong your life.)
What you shouldn't do is arbitrarily pick a side, and ask the guy saying, "the sky is blue, prove that it's pink" to make his case for it being blue. That makes you look ignorant. We have search engines for a reason. The links on these pages titled "Reply to This" are not search engines.
You are wrong, genuine research exist (Score:3)
If you are interested then Carl Franklin and Richard Morris does an excellent job discussing it (and linking to actual research) in their podcast "2 Keto Dudes".
Highly recommend it if you (or anybody else) are interested in learning about the topic.
Btw. start at show number 1 og go from there. Most of the details are explained in great detail in the first few shows.
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As I clearly stated: "They link to actual research"
You can verify it yourself, it's just more entertaining having someone discuss it instead of reading all papers yourself. So verify those that contradicts your beliefls or read them all. It's up tp you.
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It's called Ketogenic Diet, so I used the term in my post, but I think I'll try and avoid using the term diet when discussing Keto from now on
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The uncontroversial claim is that ketosis is a thing. The controversial claim is that inducing ketosis by starving yourself of carbohydrates is a good idea.
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And I do mean beliefs.
Durum tshhh (Score:2)
Rice is nice, but pasta's faster.
Obligatory "King Pin" movie reference (Score:5, Funny)
Ishmael: "You really should try to quit, Mr. Munson. They say it's bad for your heart, your lungs. It quickens the aging process."
Roy: "Is that right. Who's done more research on the subject than the good people at the American Tobacco Industry? They say it's harmless. Why would they lie? If you're dead, you can't smoke."
Good for you... (Score:2)
"good for you" is too broad a statement and can't be scientifically validated. Pasta tends to have a lower glycemic index (GI) than most bread and potatoes and some varieties of rice as they're typically eaten, meaning that it keeps your blood-glucose levels more even and puts less load on your pancreas (which produces insulin). But then pasta tends to be calorie dense and so easy to overeat, leading to weight-gain and perhaps obesity and all its accompanying health effects. Also, what do people typically h
Sometimes you need someone with an agenda (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all B.S. anyway.... (Score:2)
Every week, there's some study going on to tell you if a food we all consume regularly is "good" or "bad" for you. In many of these cases, you can go back in time a bit and find a study on the same food that concludes the opposite. (Coffee is good for you! No, wait... coffee is bad for you because of increased risks of X and Y. No, it's good for you because those risks are small while this new benefit we think it has is a big deal!)
I remember, growing up, how my mom (a registered nurse) would be SO concer
Who cares? (Score:2)
Who cares?
If the science is accurate, who cares if "Big Pasta" funded it?
If the science isn't accurate, then that's the problem, not who funded it.
This is why papers have a "competing interest" (Score:5, Insightful)
statement. Authors are supposed to disclose any funding or institutional relationships that might bias their findings.
There's nothing wrong with Barilla funding nutrition studies, but there's a lot wrong with news organizations obtaining their understanding of nutrition from Barilla PR efforts promoting Barilla-funded research. PR efforts *always* misrepresent how conclusive studies are.
In a subject as complex as nutrition on a question as vague as "healthy" you will always, always find conflicting evidence. Nearly every snake oil remedy sold by the supplement industry is represented as having scientific support... because it has. The supplement hucksters just leave out all the ambiguous and contradictory evidence.
"Evidence-based" means supported by the totality of evidence. Industry-funded research has its place, but it's nothing anyone but a researcher in the field should be paying attention to. In fact it's a bad idea to take any media reports of scientific papers at face value, since very few media outlets have a dedicated science desk anymore, much less reporters who are keeping up with specific fields.
The gold standard for the layman ought to be systematic reviews [wikipedia.org] published in high impact factor [wikipedia.org] journals. After that, technical reports by scientific commissions and panels tasked with reviewing evidence. General media reports of individual studies are worthless, and worse than worthless when they "news" source is allowing itself to be used as the mouthpiece of a PR firm.
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Big Pasta (Score:2)
"Big pasta" is a thing?
You mean like giant shells, or extra-large rigatoni or Guinness-record mile-long lasagna?
Big everything- food is a HUGE business. (Score:2)
Everybody must EAT and the industry dominates rural areas with their disproportionate political power to the city factories.
They make it illegal to simply report about meat production or you are a terrorist, hell they got stuff into the Patriot Act!
There are always some intellectual whores who will sell their minds but the real thing to watch is the INSTITUTIONS who house these corrupt scientists. A think tank pimping out scientists is something to watch but a university or government research lab is where
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"Big pasta" is a thing?
You mean like giant shells, or extra-large rigatoni or Guinness-record mile-long lasagna?
Yes, pasta and especially spagetti should be as long as possible, according to Italians. You can find 2m long pasta in speciality stores.
Are you seriously going to argue... (Score:2)
...with a nation that produces not only delicious pasta and wise scientists, but the MAFIA?
Forget about it.
If I ate their 'pasta'.. (Score:2)
(No, I'm not a 'keto' person, either. I just have a clue or three about what I should and should not be eating after all these years.)
Could we please have some sort of legislation making 'biased' 'studies' like these illegal? Give them a sound beating or
pasta is good for you (Score:2, Interesting)
The human brain is not a completely fool.
We eat pasta because pasta is good for you, over almost all environments, over all of human history. It's only recently that humanity has stumbled into a 24/7 horn-of-plenty cheesecake buffet that flummoxes our dietary instincts. Note that this is only a marginal effect: pasta is good for you, until it isn't.
Most of chubby America these days lives on the far side of the marginal fence on the consumption of all three macronutrient groups.
In this marginal world, just a
Wheeeee! (Score:2)
IMHO - cooking "al-dente" makes a HUGE difference (Score:4, Informative)
Italians are always complaining about how Americans over-cook pasta -- and they are right !
As a child in the US, the only complaint my family ever made about pasta was "Its not cooked enough".
Now my parents both have type2 diabetes and I am educating them about pasta and the glycemic index.
Al-Dente pasta digests more slowly, enters the bloodsteam more slowly, and has a lower glycemic index.
Soft pasta has a terrible glycemic index, too many carbs enter the blood faster than your body can use them, so your body converts them to fat.
Actually, it is a bit more complicated, but that is basically correct.
Re:Not a malicious ad? (Score:5, Funny)
Missed opportunity. Should have said "first pasta."
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I don't really care what the pseudo scientists say. If I die having sex and eating pasta, my life would be complete.
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Re:Not sure if it is for Pasta, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Ignoring the fact that Italians eat much smaller portions of pasta on average and usually only as a starter course. Most Italians aren’t eating mountains of spaghetti or gorging all-you-can-eat pasta bowls like in America.
Re:Not sure if it is for Pasta, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to the parent article http://www.newsweek.com/pasta-... [newsweek.com], so "ate pasta instead of other forms of carbohydrate". So this study proves, nothing, eating one form of carbohydrate is not different to eating another form of carbohydrate. In the article "Study participants ate 3.3 servings of around a half cup of pasta on average each week", what does that even mean, they ate nothing else, that was the only carbohydrate they ate, so looking at the study, oh wait, they didn't link to it, not suspicious at all (I have tried wholemeal pasta, sort of reasonable but the more times I ate it the more disturbing the flavour, simpler to only eat pasta a few times a year with a lot of high in vegetable sauce).
Reminds me of the no sugar rush study for children eating sugar, check the study and oh look, the ensured the children only ate a very limited amount of sugar, a healthy dietary level and nothing what so ever like the amount of sugar they would normally eat. Also the calorie study where they compared the calories of coca cola to other foods, of course based upon burning them in a calorimeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], so that of course a kilo of wood pretty much the same a kilo of sugar, completely ignoring the principle of human digestible calories, they were of comparing high roughage foods (most of which you can not digest but pass through your digestive track) directly to bloody sugar. Then the lie with umami and msg, umami originally is a balance of salty, sweet, bitter and sour in cooking in order to generate savouriness, not adding a neuro stimulant into food to stimulate the false perceptions of flavour, incidentally an addictive one. They lie, cheat and steal at every opportunity.
Buzzfeed is of course a shite advertising site, trying to generate buzz on articles which are actually advertisements. As web site best to be avoided, just a sham advertising platform, really lame. Sort of OK originally but really shite now. Buzzfeed should be mocked on /. not refereed to.
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Ignoring the fact that Italians eat much smaller portions of pasta on average and usually only as a starter course. Most Italians aren’t eating mountains of spaghetti or gorging all-you-can-eat pasta bowls like in America.
Plus Mac ‘n’ Cheese isn’t anything like an Italian pasta dish.
Re:Not sure if it is for Pasta, but... (Score:5, Informative)
No, the only statement supported by anything is small portions of pasta eaten in moderation do not adversely affect your health. I don’t see any study showing any hard correlation that it’s solely the pasta itself that is the reason Italians are so healthy. Especially when their diets on average have mamy other variance points from the average American’s diet beyond pasta.
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Re:Not sure if it is for Pasta, but... (Score:4, Funny)
I didn’t say you did. Just so you know people can actually be referring to the general topic when posting replies.
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In all probability, for a given range of metabolisms, pasta is probably a healthy component in a well-rounded diet. This likely even goes for small amounts of junk food. Our ancestors developed the ability to consume the widest array of foods in the known animal kingdom. This suggests that our systems are best calibrated to for exactly that. Even further, the needs likely change slowly throughout our adult lives in more subtle ways than we might imagine.
There's no perfect diet. Diet is only one of several f
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> when did Big Pasta Corp become a thing?
Probably when they finally figured out in the 80's that they didn't know what the fuck they were doing [youtu.be] W.R.T. marketing pasta sauce.
Episode is: Perfect Pasta Sauce (The Jimquisition REMASTERED)
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Nearly all of the "climate scientists" draw their salaries from government institutions.
Except that their salaries do not depend on getting certain results. The salaries of Big Pasta do.
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Yeah, right. Suppose for a second, they conclude, there is no danger of climate change — for how much longer after arriving at that conclusion will they continue getting those salaries?
Conflict of interest is conflict of interest...
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for how much longer after arriving at that conclusion will they continue getting those salaries?
Most of climate research is overlapping with other research that we want to continue, such as historic climate reconstruction, weather modelling, and earth observation.
And if you are right, why is the current Trump administration not telling these scientists to produce the results they want ?
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All of it only deemed necessary because of the fears of the Global Warming, err, Climate Change. Should these fears subside, the funding will go back to, say, the levels of the 1993, the bubble will deflate and 75% of the people [gao.gov] involved in climate science today will have to look for new jobs...
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You can question the consensus all you want. Jut bring some actual scientific questions.
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Just what the pasta-makers would tell you about the research in TFA.
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Even the pasta makers won't claim there's a scientific consensus on pasta.
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The topic is neither the pasta, nor even the consensus. The topic is conflict of interest. If you are hired by someone interested in a certain conclusion, your confirming of the conclusion is tainted.
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Nope, not if the science is valid.
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Cool story, bro.
Stay classy!
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I am trained in gorilla warfare
That should come [youtube.com] in [youtube.com] handy [youtube.com].
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I'd rather support my local pasta farmers [youtube.com].
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The Pasta Nostra?
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Do people ever realize how neat and novel, historically, that our main problem is, of too much nutritious, energetic cheap food?
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Thing was it wasn't just that industry publishing it. It was mass-reams of nutritional scientists stating the same thing. It's right in line with all those kids who drank sugary drinks in the 50's and 60's but now kids are suddenly overweight, but they never thought of the reason why. Sitting on your ass all day does have consequences, especially when government itself pushed the "keep your kids inside" bullshit.
Just have your bacon and eggs, and use the bacon fat for other cooking too. Be happy.
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Ones which contain ingredients you couldn't recognise by taste, smell, or appearance.
Alternatively, ones which contain things a globally representative sample of grandmothers wouldn't have had in their kitchens.