There comes a time when a besmirched, besieged food must step up to the plate and defend its honor, or at least its carbohydrate count.
Here in the land that has loved and cooked it best, pasta is about to make its stand.
For three days next week, physicians, chefs, pasta manufacturers and other pasta partisans will gather in Italy's capital for a full-boiled response to the advances of the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, which threatens to put rigatoni on the run.
"We're not dancing anymore," said K. Dun Gifford, the president of Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, the Boston nutrition research and advocacy group that is organizing the conference.
"This is `Pasta Fights Back.' It needs to," he said.
Gifford was using the nickname that he and other participants have given the event. Officially titled Healthy Pasta Meals, it is more than a summit of experts and entrepreneurs who are invested, gastronomically or financially, in the fate of fusilli. It is a telltale moment in the carbohydrate wars, a clear sign of just how tough it is these days to be a starch.
What with the Atkins and South Beach diets, Sugar Busters and Protein Power, the carbohydrate is viewed by many Americans as a positively menacing macronutrient, the evil root of all love handles.
"It's a frenzy," said Susan Toussaint, director of marketing for the American Italian Pasta Co. of Kansas City, Missouri, referring to the widespread shunning of carbohydrates in the US.
Toussaint said that over the last 12 months, her company, a conference sponsor, had a roughly 5 percent drop in US grocery-store sales of its pasta.
She said that the decline was typical of the pasta industry and that one reason was the vilification of all carbohydrates. "Pasta's getting lumped in the same category as Krispy Kreme," she said.
"It's not fair. All carbohydrates are not created equal," she said.
That is the overarching message of the conference. Its many sponsors and patrons also include Barilla, a leading Italian pasta manufacturer. Although few Italians have begun kneeling to the low-carbohydrate gods, trends do tend to travel across the Atlantic.
Rome was chosen as the conference site for the semiotic and theatrical garnishes it provides. What better setting in which to praise pasta -- and to point out that Italians, who eat it regularly, are generally slimmer, and live longer, than Americans?
Gifford has drafted scientists from around the world to make pasta's case.
"We're doing damage control for pasta, if you like," said David Jenkins, who teaches metabolism and nutrition at the University of Toronto's medical school.
Jenkins is an authority on the glycemic index, a measure of how quickly food is metabolized and how suddenly it raises blood sugar. Steep jolts are widely considered bad for health and weight. He said that pasta's dense, compact nature means that it is digested more slowly than other starches.
Jenkins plans to explain all of this at the conference, which begins on Monday at the Cavalieri Hilton outside Rome's historic center. Also on the agenda are discussions of everything from cooking to cardiovascular disease, from the properties of wheat to fad diets through the ages.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese