Buzz
When a study portrays pasta positively, it’s tough to dismiss. Almost everyone loves pasta, right? I certainly do, and I bet you do, too. Barilla, a well-known pasta maker, absolutely agrees.
The headlines: Eating Pasta Can Aid in Weight Loss, Study Shows (USA Today), Eating Pasta Linked to Weight Loss in Recent Study (Newsweek)
The story: “I believe the context is often misunderstood,” says John Sievenpiper, one of the study's authors, when I asked about headlines like the ones above. The study actually concluded that small portions of pasta, when part of a low glycemic index diet, weren’t linked to weight gain. “We believe the findings could apply to other healthy eating plans, but it’s not a matter of eating as much pasta as you want in any diet and expecting weight loss benefits,” he explains.
This study wasn’t an original experiment, but rather a review of existing research. The authors couldn’t find studies testing pasta’s weight loss effects on its own, but they did find studies of low-glycemic-index diets that included pasta.
(The glycemic index (GI) measures the impact of carbohydrate-rich foods on blood sugar levels. Cornflakes have a GI of 81, instant mashed potatoes 87. Pasta, surprisingly, has a much lower GI: 49, according to this list.)
Consuming small servings of pasta throughout the week (half a cup, three times) doesn’t disrupt a low-GI diet. That’s what the recent analysis discovered, and it shouldn’t be shocking. I asked Sievenpiper if any food study has ever shown that a specific food undermines the benefits of an otherwise healthy diet. He couldn’t recall any such example.
Why are we seeing headlines about a study that doesn’t really offer anything groundbreaking?
To be fair, any study published in a scientific journal does mark a news event. This particular study was part of a Canadian project analyzing the role of certain foods in healthy diets. Sievenpiper mentioned that his team had conducted similar research on nuts and pulses (like beans and lentils). Pasta tends to get a bad reputation, so it made sense to examine whether it had any specific impact on weight loss. Fair enough.
But thousands of studies are conducted each year without anyone hearing about them. (Remember that excitement over this analysis of beans? Yeah, neither do I.) There are several steps between a study’s publication and the media frenzy, and one of the biggest is the press release.
In this instance, the press release that most journalists encountered was this one published by St. Michael’s Hospital. Several authors of the study are affiliated with the hospital. It's common practice for institutions like hospitals and universities to alert the press when their researchers publish studies with potential news value. The press release is essentially a pre-written article that some media outlets may use in full, while others may use it as a basis for their own reporting.
But there’s more. Pasta company Barilla was also ‘supporting communications’ for this study, according to a representative from PR agency Edelman. She reached out to me a few days before the study’s release, asking if I’d like to speak with a dietitian about low GI diets and pasta. Barilla’s name didn’t appear in that initial email, a trend I’ve noticed lately when companies want to promote a study that favors their brand.
Barilla didn’t fund the new study, though it did provide some support—mainly free pasta—for certain trials included in the analysis. Sievenpiper mentioned that researchers and company representatives often stay in touch, and they had informed Barilla about the upcoming release of the pasta study.
The takeaway: Small servings of pasta can be part of a healthy diet, but that’s hardly breaking news.
