Pass the pasta!

During my semester abroad in Italy I ate a lot of pasta. By a lot, I mean that I had it 1-2 times daily. While my digestive system often found all that starch to be a bit of a challenge, I recently found an article that suggests there may be some positive effects of this characteristic of the Italian diet.

Resistant starches (RS) are starches that reach the large intestine during the digestive process. They do so because they are not digested by pancreatic amylase. RS are found in cereals, potatoes, and legumes. Studies previous to this one reported that the average European eats 4 grams of RS per day. The authors of this paper conducted a study to determine the RS intake of Italians. They discovered that the average Italian consumes 8.5 grams of RS per day. They also discovered regional differences with north-western Italians eating 7.2 grams per day compared with 9.2 in the south. That's a lot of pasta...

The authors suggest that diets with high starch content lead to lower risk for colon cancer. This conclusion is based on previous studies both in vivo and in vitro. While I find this study interesting, I think I will still eat less pasta than Italians.


Source:
Brighenti, F., et al. Resistant starch in the Italian diet. British Journal of Nutrition (1998), 80, 333-341.