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> the popular 21st-century view that heavy pasta meals leave diners feeling equally heavy and lethargic. Pasta gets a bad rap unfairly, I think. A few years a

> the popular 21st-century view that heavy pasta meals leave diners feeling equally heavy and lethargic. Pasta gets a bad rap unfairly, I think. A few years ago over the course of ~18 months, I lost 100 lbs. I ate pasta almost every day when I did this. One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. This affects much more than just pasta. But in the American mind, a serving of pasta is often easily 3x what it should be. A small plate of pasta, maybe pancetta, some cheese and an egg? Filling, but also can be light.

camillomiller 6y ago
As an Italian, my experience is that I can’t have any satisfaction with less than 180g of pasta. Therefore I only eat it like once a week and make it a little event. Growing up I had similar portions almost on a daily basis and I was never overweight. Trick: do sports. A lot.
- enriquto 6y ago
  If you put a lot of fat in your pasta (e.g., guanciale) then you get filled with a much smaller serving, like 100g.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Your mention of guanciale reminded me of this delicious video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAdKl1UYZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAdKl1UYZs The serving seems gigantic though.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      Cool video! It's very easy to do (provided you have the ingredients). The serving in the video seems to be for 3 people. It's a really greasy dish, there's no way you can eat all of that alone.
      - wayvey 6y ago
        While cutting the guanciale he says "quite a lot for two people" and later while adding eggs he says "for two people you take two eggs" so it must be intended as a portion for two.
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
      Big mistake: no olive oil should go in the pan where you cook the guanciale. Otherwise, everything else is legit.
      - znpy 6y ago
        This. Stuff like guanciale should cook in its own fat.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        Yes, even more that at some point he removes some of the oil/fat mix. What was the point of the oil, then?
- arrrg 6y ago
  180g cooked or uncooked? Portions with 125g of uncooked pasta feel fine to me. That‘s 450 calories. Plus sauce (200 on the low end, 350 calories on the high end, depending on what exactly you want to eat – 200 calories would be something like a 400g can of tomatoes, garlic, onions, some olive oil) and cheese (100 calories for 25g Parmesan) you end up with a meal that‘s between 750 and 900 calories. That between a normal and large-ish meal, though in both cases not exactly huge. Definitely something you could conceivably eat every day without much trouble, though I do agree that something with less carbs would probably be a bit more filling. 125g uncooked dried pasta should be about 280g cooked pasta. Don’t get me wrong, I can eat 180g of uncooked pasta no problem. But that tends to go right up to the line of feeling very full.
  - theelous3 6y ago
    Why would you ever eat uncooked pasta?
    - camillomiller 6y ago
      You weight pasta when it's uncooked. That's the usual way.
      - theelous3 6y ago
        Ah. Haha, ok. That clears everything up, thank you.
  - camillomiller 6y ago
    Uncooked. depends on the pasta type though. Spaghetti can be easily 180g. Penne, Fusilli or Rigatoni, let's say 150g. My sauces are generally quite light. I'm vegetarian, so they never involve calorie-dense ingredients such as guanciale or pancetta. (I know, I know, what am I missing and so on... :D) For me pasta means less ingredients as possible, at the highest possible quality. Examples: Fresh Tomato-Basil Spaghetti. I use only spaghetti from selected Italian brands such as De Cecco - low end but extremely good in my opinion - Rummo or Gentile, organic Tomatoes from a fresh food store, my own home-grown basil, extra virgin olive oil from Calabria, chili also from Calabria, extra-fine tomato extract from Mutti. Fettucelle burro e limone: Fettuccelle DeCecco, Irish butter, Bio shallots, Phu Quoc black pepper, organic Lemons (from Sorrento when in Italy, just bio when here in Germany) for the juice and the zest. Fusilli or Rigatoni alla Norma. Organic tomato sauce from Mutti with pieces of tomatoes, organic aubergines from Italy, same olive oil from Calabria, same chili from calabria, my own basil... And so on: Aglio e Olio e Peperoncino, Arrabbiata, Puttanesca, Pasta all'aglione, ecc.. The sauce is never heavy, and the pasta itself can shine. As you can see I also never cook pasta as an afterthought. This way, you can definitely control how much you eat. Habits subjected to radically change when I visit mamma e babbo back in Italy.
- prower 6y ago
  Wow, we usually eat around 250g of pasta divided by 3 people. 180g only for you? Congratulations! Full disclosure: we're also all very sedentary
  - camillomiller 6y ago
    Yep, only once or maybe twice a week. Always for lunch, on a day I train ;)
  - sai_c 6y ago
    I eat 250g (uncooked) alone. Add to that sauce and vegetables, sometimes meat. I'm nearly forty, and 1,74m and weigh between 76 and 78 kg (depending on the time of the year). I'm a software developer and only do loaded carries three times a week. My wife always asks where all the calories go ;-).
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
      That typing all day long can be quite stressful, you know!
- mhd 6y ago
  If that's uncooked pasta, that's about 650+ calories, right? If the sauce ain't too heavy and that's the main dish of the day, even without sports that shouldn't be a big issue.
- africanboy 6y ago
  As an Italian, that's really a lot of pasta. I eat 80gr of pasta, a bit more at the restaurant (they make larger portions), I hate big bowls of pasta and have it no more than 2/3 times a week, usually less. Pasta is a kind of food you have to eat and then wait that gastric acids kick in to take the hunger away If you're trying to eat pasta until it makes you feel full, you're having too much of it. Pasta releases water over time and too much of it will also make you very sleepy, especially after lunch. That's why there is a tradition in Italy of not working too much after lunch and shops used to reopen in the afternoon at 16. People had too much pasta (they had not much more to eat, until they had it) But if you eat it once a week I guess it's ok, my grandma used to eat pasta with bread everyday and she lived 96 years... I did a lot of sport in the past, it doesn't really keep your weight down, to lose weight doing sport, while also eating a lot without limits, you should do it 12 hours a day. I was luck enough to be born genetically skinny, but now that we are older many of my friends are fighting against weight daily, despite being professional players on a strict diet until their 30s.
  - hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
    > Pasta releases water over time and too much of it will also make you very sleepy, especially after lunch. No way
- wlll 6y ago
  I (an Englishman) ate large portions of pasta until about 5 years ago when someone suggested weighing it and now I use 85g per portion. It never seems like it's going to be enough, but it always is.
- lqet 6y ago
  As a student, when I ate nothing else during the day, my standard amount for dinner was 125g (so you get 4 meals out of a standard package). When combined with vegetables, it is more than enough.
renox 6y ago
> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. This is true for every food in the US.. (I'm an overweight French guy who eat too much but in the US even the "small" portions were far too much for me)
konschubert 6y ago
That reminds me of this meme: https://mk0dietvsdiseascuno2.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/All-Diets-Work-In-The-Exact-Same-Way-They-Cut-Your-Calorie-Intake.jpg https://mk0dietvsdiseascuno2.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...
- asveikau 6y ago
  That's amusing on one level, but I do know that many struggle to create a caloric deficit, and some foods do seem to make it easier to feel full with less.
  - konschubert 6y ago
    That’s a very fair point, I had not considered that.
  - delecti 6y ago
    Definitely, and I feel like "some foods" varies per individual more than I hear people talk about.
- bjohnson225 6y ago
  Nice. It’s still good to have these methods for achieving the ultimate goal, people just need to stop presenting whatever works for them as the one true way.
- jkim1258 6y ago
  Yes, it is true that they have the same qualitative goal of creating a caloric deficit. However, some diet patterns slow down the metabolism more than others, which heavily impacts the likelihood of success in creating a significant (quantitative) caloric deficit
MisterTea 6y ago
Yup. When I was boxing my coach started me on weight loss and recommended pasta or rice for dinner with the serving size being that of a small bowl and not "heap the plate and pile the rest of the food on top" Carbs are energy. You just have to be sure to only eat what you need and actually use the energy. Otherwise the body starts storing it as fat. And like you said small portions of fatty things like cheese and eggs are perfectly fine as long as you burn what you eat.
lqet 6y ago
Purely anecdotal and unscientific, but a few years ago I watched a documentary in which a TV team followed identical twins. One of them only ate pasta-based meals for a month, the other only ate potato-based meals (if I remember correctly, they made sure that both meals where basically the same, modulo potato/pasta). They checked blood results, BMI, etc. before and after the diet. The potato-eating twin gained a few kilos and had generally worse blood results than the pasta-eating twin, who kept her weight. Interestingly, the potato-eating twin hated potatoes after 4 weeks of eating them and had to force herself to touch them at the end, while the pasta-eating twin still liked pasta.
- nvrGiveUp 6y ago
  Yeah that is Unscientific
briefcomment 6y ago
This is why food bans are bad. The same thing that harms one person can work for someone else. Even something like Bloomberg's ban on large sodas is probably heavy handed. Sugar is not always a poison. It can be a valuable fuel, even at large quantities (and large sizes can also add a lot of convenience to some people's lives).
- Justin_K 6y ago
  The problem is the sugar is addictive, abused by 99% of its users and it provides no benefit. In what cases is soda a valuable fuel that couldn't be replaced by something more natural and healthy?
  - hervature 6y ago
    > Provides no benefit It's sugar, it provides energy. Some people like the taste and the bubbly sensation of soda. Here is Zdeno Chara, one of the best defencemen in recent hockey history drinking one during a very important game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVA7lgJRHQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVA7lgJRHQQ Just because someone who is burning 2,000 calories is drinking a small bottle doesn't mean it is appropriate to drink 2L everyday. Everything in moderation.
    - 8note 6y ago
      He could easily just drink two smaller bottles though
nestorD 6y ago
> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. Portion size was the key for me. I stopped feeling heavy and lethargic after pasta meals once I started weighting my pasta before eating. This made a world of difference on my state after eating and, by contrast, helped me realise how heavy I usually felt after eating (80g of uncooked pasta seem to be a good balance for me).
- harrydehal 6y ago
  Weighing and portions are key. When I cooked professionally in Rome, we weighed out 50g for Italians and 100g for Americans in terms of planning large buffet/group lunches (combined with options for soup and 6-7 different salad or veggie dishes). I've found that 75g hits the spot for me.

camillomiller 6y ago

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

enriquto 6y ago
If you put a lot of fat in your pasta (e.g., guanciale) then you get filled with a much smaller serving, like 100g.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Your mention of guanciale reminded me of this delicious video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAdKl1UYZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAdKl1UYZs The serving seems gigantic though.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    Cool video! It's very easy to do (provided you have the ingredients). The serving in the video seems to be for 3 people. It's a really greasy dish, there's no way you can eat all of that alone.
    - wayvey 6y ago
      While cutting the guanciale he says "quite a lot for two people" and later while adding eggs he says "for two people you take two eggs" so it must be intended as a portion for two.
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Big mistake: no olive oil should go in the pan where you cook the guanciale. Otherwise, everything else is legit.
    - znpy 6y ago
      This. Stuff like guanciale should cook in its own fat.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      Yes, even more that at some point he removes some of the oil/fat mix. What was the point of the oil, then?
arrrg 6y ago
180g cooked or uncooked? Portions with 125g of uncooked pasta feel fine to me. That‘s 450 calories. Plus sauce (200 on the low end, 350 calories on the high end, depending on what exactly you want to eat – 200 calories would be something like a 400g can of tomatoes, garlic, onions, some olive oil) and cheese (100 calories for 25g Parmesan) you end up with a meal that‘s between 750 and 900 calories. That between a normal and large-ish meal, though in both cases not exactly huge. Definitely something you could conceivably eat every day without much trouble, though I do agree that something with less carbs would probably be a bit more filling. 125g uncooked dried pasta should be about 280g cooked pasta. Don’t get me wrong, I can eat 180g of uncooked pasta no problem. But that tends to go right up to the line of feeling very full.
- theelous3 6y ago
  Why would you ever eat uncooked pasta?
  - camillomiller 6y ago
    You weight pasta when it's uncooked. That's the usual way.
    - theelous3 6y ago
      Ah. Haha, ok. That clears everything up, thank you.
- camillomiller 6y ago
  Uncooked. depends on the pasta type though. Spaghetti can be easily 180g. Penne, Fusilli or Rigatoni, let's say 150g. My sauces are generally quite light. I'm vegetarian, so they never involve calorie-dense ingredients such as guanciale or pancetta. (I know, I know, what am I missing and so on... :D) For me pasta means less ingredients as possible, at the highest possible quality. Examples: Fresh Tomato-Basil Spaghetti. I use only spaghetti from selected Italian brands such as De Cecco - low end but extremely good in my opinion - Rummo or Gentile, organic Tomatoes from a fresh food store, my own home-grown basil, extra virgin olive oil from Calabria, chili also from Calabria, extra-fine tomato extract from Mutti. Fettucelle burro e limone: Fettuccelle DeCecco, Irish butter, Bio shallots, Phu Quoc black pepper, organic Lemons (from Sorrento when in Italy, just bio when here in Germany) for the juice and the zest. Fusilli or Rigatoni alla Norma. Organic tomato sauce from Mutti with pieces of tomatoes, organic aubergines from Italy, same olive oil from Calabria, same chili from calabria, my own basil... And so on: Aglio e Olio e Peperoncino, Arrabbiata, Puttanesca, Pasta all'aglione, ecc.. The sauce is never heavy, and the pasta itself can shine. As you can see I also never cook pasta as an afterthought. This way, you can definitely control how much you eat. Habits subjected to radically change when I visit mamma e babbo back in Italy.
prower 6y ago
Wow, we usually eat around 250g of pasta divided by 3 people. 180g only for you? Congratulations! Full disclosure: we're also all very sedentary
- camillomiller 6y ago
  Yep, only once or maybe twice a week. Always for lunch, on a day I train ;)
- sai_c 6y ago
  I eat 250g (uncooked) alone. Add to that sauce and vegetables, sometimes meat. I'm nearly forty, and 1,74m and weigh between 76 and 78 kg (depending on the time of the year). I'm a software developer and only do loaded carries three times a week. My wife always asks where all the calories go ;-).
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    That typing all day long can be quite stressful, you know!
mhd 6y ago
If that's uncooked pasta, that's about 650+ calories, right? If the sauce ain't too heavy and that's the main dish of the day, even without sports that shouldn't be a big issue.
africanboy 6y ago
As an Italian, that's really a lot of pasta. I eat 80gr of pasta, a bit more at the restaurant (they make larger portions), I hate big bowls of pasta and have it no more than 2/3 times a week, usually less. Pasta is a kind of food you have to eat and then wait that gastric acids kick in to take the hunger away If you're trying to eat pasta until it makes you feel full, you're having too much of it. Pasta releases water over time and too much of it will also make you very sleepy, especially after lunch. That's why there is a tradition in Italy of not working too much after lunch and shops used to reopen in the afternoon at 16. People had too much pasta (they had not much more to eat, until they had it) But if you eat it once a week I guess it's ok, my grandma used to eat pasta with bread everyday and she lived 96 years... I did a lot of sport in the past, it doesn't really keep your weight down, to lose weight doing sport, while also eating a lot without limits, you should do it 12 hours a day. I was luck enough to be born genetically skinny, but now that we are older many of my friends are fighting against weight daily, despite being professional players on a strict diet until their 30s.
- hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
  > Pasta releases water over time and too much of it will also make you very sleepy, especially after lunch. No way
wlll 6y ago
I (an Englishman) ate large portions of pasta until about 5 years ago when someone suggested weighing it and now I use 85g per portion. It never seems like it's going to be enough, but it always is.
lqet 6y ago
As a student, when I ate nothing else during the day, my standard amount for dinner was 125g (so you get 4 meals out of a standard package). When combined with vegetables, it is more than enough.

renox 6y ago

> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. This is true for every food in the US.. (I'm an overweight French guy who eat too much but in the US even the "small" portions were far too much for me)

konschubert 6y ago

That reminds me of this meme: https://mk0dietvsdiseascuno2.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/All-Diets-Work-In-The-Exact-Same-Way-They-Cut-Your-Calorie-Intake.jpg https://mk0dietvsdiseascuno2.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...

asveikau 6y ago
That's amusing on one level, but I do know that many struggle to create a caloric deficit, and some foods do seem to make it easier to feel full with less.
- konschubert 6y ago
  That’s a very fair point, I had not considered that.
- delecti 6y ago
  Definitely, and I feel like "some foods" varies per individual more than I hear people talk about.
bjohnson225 6y ago
Nice. It’s still good to have these methods for achieving the ultimate goal, people just need to stop presenting whatever works for them as the one true way.
jkim1258 6y ago
Yes, it is true that they have the same qualitative goal of creating a caloric deficit. However, some diet patterns slow down the metabolism more than others, which heavily impacts the likelihood of success in creating a significant (quantitative) caloric deficit

MisterTea 6y ago

Yup. When I was boxing my coach started me on weight loss and recommended pasta or rice for dinner with the serving size being that of a small bowl and not "heap the plate and pile the rest of the food on top" Carbs are energy. You just have to be sure to only eat what you need and actually use the energy. Otherwise the body starts storing it as fat. And like you said small portions of fatty things like cheese and eggs are perfectly fine as long as you burn what you eat.

lqet 6y ago

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

nvrGiveUp 6y ago
Yeah that is Unscientific

briefcomment 6y ago

This is why food bans are bad. The same thing that harms one person can work for someone else. Even something like Bloomberg's ban on large sodas is probably heavy handed. Sugar is not always a poison. It can be a valuable fuel, even at large quantities (and large sizes can also add a lot of convenience to some people's lives).

Justin_K 6y ago
The problem is the sugar is addictive, abused by 99% of its users and it provides no benefit. In what cases is soda a valuable fuel that couldn't be replaced by something more natural and healthy?
- hervature 6y ago
  > Provides no benefit It's sugar, it provides energy. Some people like the taste and the bubbly sensation of soda. Here is Zdeno Chara, one of the best defencemen in recent hockey history drinking one during a very important game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVA7lgJRHQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVA7lgJRHQQ Just because someone who is burning 2,000 calories is drinking a small bottle doesn't mean it is appropriate to drink 2L everyday. Everything in moderation.
  - 8note 6y ago
    He could easily just drink two smaller bottles though

nestorD 6y ago

> One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. Portion size was the key for me. I stopped feeling heavy and lethargic after pasta meals once I started weighting my pasta before eating. This made a world of difference on my state after eating and, by contrast, helped me realise how heavy I usually felt after eating (80g of uncooked pasta seem to be a good balance for me).

harrydehal 6y ago
Weighing and portions are key. When I cooked professionally in Rome, we weighed out 50g for Italians and 100g for Americans in terms of planning large buffet/group lunches (combined with options for soup and 6-7 different salad or veggie dishes). I've found that 75g hits the spot for me.