to ask if Italians and any of you eat brown pasta

[MoYerBoat]

because, according to many a Mumsnetter, white pasta is the work of the devil.

So do they eat white or brown pasta in Italy - home of pasta.

And what about brown rice - who eats that?

(Badly worded OP but really would like answers)

[duchesse]

there's a particularly good paragraph in this article about white rice and beriberi.

[limitedperiodonly]

Do you really think that? Oh well.

[snoworneahva]

I think obesity might be costing a wee bit more than all those things put together and what worse is that people are getting fatter, kids are getting fatter. Best not do anything about it - let them die!

[Owllady]

white pasta isn't white it's yellow

[discrete]

The reality is that a lot of taste is about habit. I used to eat white pasta, then switched to semi-wholeweat because that is what I could get organic, then occasionally started eating wholewheat then switched to it completely. I now find white pasta tasteless and fairly horrible.

With rice, otoh, I always disliked white and only ever started loving it when I discovered brown. I'll still eat white/semi white risotto rice if it is very well prepared, but otherwise would rather give it a miss.

Many of the people on this thread who said brown rice/pasta is awful will admit to liking brown bread, so don't have anything in principle against whole wheats, just don't have the habit with pasta.

It may be related as well to the quality of pasta that people tend to get when buying white v. brown. I've often found that branding something as 'healthy' or sometimes even 'organic' is just an excuse to overprice shit. To make a fair comparison you need to get top quality of both.

[limitedperiodonly]

And antibiotic misuse. And riding horses and motorbikes. And crossing the road without looking. And...

[snoworneahva]

Think it might be someone's business if we are funding the management of the health problems that result from obesity.

[limitedperiodonly]

Eat and enjoy. But if you use terms such as 'healthy' and 'quite nice' I'm going to think you see food as a penance and not want to eat with you.

And it's not anyone's business what size or shape anyone else is.

[duchesse]

We eat both brown pasta and brown rice. Sometimes also buckwheat pasta. Also "bean" noodles when we make chinese or thai food. It's just got so much more...substance than the denatured versions. You don't feel like you're just eating pap- it feels like proper food ifswim.

[Metukah]

I'm italian and I like brown pasta an brown rice.
Regular white pasta is healthy if you cook it 'al dente' it keeps its low GI.
There's nothing wrong to have pasta as carb. Just have plenty of vegetables with it :)

[happyAvocado]

yes I know - but I distinguish wholemeal spaghetti for being very tasty whilst other shapes I tried so far weren't

I've been using wholemeal spaghetti for around 10 years and would not go back to the ordinary one.

[Branleuse]

id rather starve than eat brown pasta

[pinkyredrose]

happy Spaghetti is pasta

[babySophieRose]

I find the wholemeal pasta sweet in a way, do not like it.

[ifancyashandy]

Limited what you consider 'joyless' others might actually enjoy eating. What with having different taste buds n'all..

[happyAvocado]

I like brown spaghetti, but not brown pasta
there's half/half pasta in Sainsburys, quite nice

[snoworneahva]

Limitedperiodonly you appear to have the whole thing sorted - well done! If only we all ate like you we wouldn't have an increasingly alarming obesity problem and neither would Italy. What should we do?

[limitedperiodonly]

Well, I'm not fat, neither do I prescribe certain foodstuffs to my family for medicinal purposes.

Joyless munching in the pursuit of health when it's unnecessary and alarmist seems to me rather horrifying.

[snoworneahva]

High rates of childhood obesity is horrifying, lots of overweight 2 year olds is clearly a huge health issue, the current older generation may be outliving the rest of Europe but the younger generation are not showing many signs of being able to make the same claim - why would the decrease in the health of a nation not be horrifying? How did that happen in a country that prides itself in good food?

[ClairesTravellingCircus]

Thought this might be of interest:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21690003

[limitedperiodonly]

God forbid fat people. How horrifying.

[snoworneahva]

Mind you the Italians are getting pretty fat now too. We visited last year and the kids were quite, actually they were very fat...I was a bit shocked after hearing all this talk about their healthy diet.

[louisianablue2000]

White pasta is not the work of the devil, some so-called-food-expert 'nutritionalist' has learned a tiny bit of biochemistry out of context and thinks that because starchy carbs are broken down by your body into sugar that means they are as bad as sugar. It's bullshit. No dietician would ever say white pasta is bad for you.

FWIW we eat white pasta (de cecco), white rice (basmati) and mainly (but not exclusively) wholemeal bread.

[fieldfare]

Dh is Italian and wouldn't eat brown pasta. His Dad would ask me wtf I was thinking!

I prefer wild rice or basmati.

[limitedperiodonly]

drwitch i agree with you about barley v brown rice. I like barley and don't hate brown rice but God, it's penance that I don't want to pay.

And yes, snow British people do have the most mucked up ideas of food because of a mindless obsession with food as medicine,

I dread the idiot who's been on a five-a-day course who fucks up my cooking by saying: 'Hey, come on children, let's ruin your mum's ragu by putting sweetcorn and red peppers in it.'