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Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta (buzzfeed.com)
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.
In the heading, you should enquote "Scientists" to indicate the irony. A Scientist is not a Shill. A Shill is not a Scientist.
Missed opportunity. Should have said "first pasta."
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The blessings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are numerous and provided with great love....and usually a nice sauce.
... try anti-pasta.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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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On the one hand, we should be skeptical of "research" funded by folks with a stake in the outcome. On the other, who else would do it? Would a study funded by an Atkins advocacy group that didn't find benefits to a low-carb diet ever see the light of day? No, it would quietly be shredded, burned, and buried. Like our adversarial court system, you need people who think that we've gotten it wrong to pony up to get the other viewpoint looked at. The real test is, are the results reproducible?
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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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 published in high impact factor 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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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.
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.
Going to the parent article http://www.newsweek.com/pasta-..., 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/..., 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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