Pasta is a popular food, especially considering the many pasta variants sold in the supermarket. Pasta is cheap and easy to prepare well. Some people are quite happy with nothing more than pasta, a little olive oil or ketchup, and leftovers. Pasta is eaten by students strapped for cash at the end of the month and the affluent alike.
The problem with this kind of food is that, though it tastes good, there is often little nutrition to be found. Pasta lacks fiber, vitamins, minerals, and many healthy fats to varying degrees, depending on the topping. According to the Danish School of Agriculture, the healthy wheat germ oil naturally found in pasta is often removed from the pasta you buy so that it can be sold separately.
Pasta is made from wheat, which originally came to Northern Europe from Mediterranean climes. For the past 100 years it has been the replacement for many local crops in both Europe and North America. There are few nutrients in modern wheat. Wheat grown in centuries past had more nutrients but these nutrients have been bred out of many wheat strains in favor of higher gluten content. Higher gluten content makes wheat more suited for baking. Gluten can also be found in oats, rye, and barley; but wheat has the highest content. Pasta is made from wheat with lower gluten content than normal.
Here we come to another, and possibly much overlooked, problem. Gluten is made up of proteins and contains gliadine, which irritates the intestines. More people than one would expect have problems tolerating large amounts of gluten. Symptoms are varying and sometimes severe. Even so, only a small group of people are diagnosed with celiac disease, where gluten triggers pain, fatty diarrhea, inflammation, anemia, and injures the intestinal wall.
An American theory that has recently been reintroduced is that blood type and diet are related. It points out that people who do not tolerate wheat often the AB blood type. Oddly, this is not true of spelt, an ancient grain which people of all blood types tolerate.
Many people find relief from unexplained symptoms after a period without pasta and other wheat products. Wheat intake has been associated with health problems such as asthma, allergy, bronchitis, Crohn’s disease, diarrhea, arthritis, headache, skin problems, chronic tiredness, psychiatric problems, sleep disorders, intestinal problems, and frequent ear infections.
Regular pasta eating is not necessarily the culprit behind all of these problems. Other foods can be responsible or the culprit could be something else altogether.
But it doesn’t cost more than a little inconvenience to remove wheat products from the diet and avoid them for a three week period. If the symptoms disappear in this period, wheat is the problem. Try it. You could miraculously feel better!
