Eating Pasta Was Just Linked to Weight Loss, Not Making You Fat

Once it comes time to lose weight, most of us immediately give up everything good in our lives: pasta, other types of pasta, and the remaining types of pasta. This impulse is understandable as it's common knowledge that pasta leads to immediate and ruthless weight gain, but a new study suggests that that may be misguided.

This good news comes from a study published in BMJ, which looked at the impact of pasta consumption on the body weight and BMI of almost 2,500 participants in 30 randomized control trials. The lucky souls who participated in this study ate roughly 3.3 servings of pasta a week in place of other carbohydrates while they kept to a low-GI diet. A low-GI diet means low glycemic, which means that your blood sugar levels increase at a slower rate compared to other refined carbohydrates, like in white bread. In fact, some participants who ate pasta along with the low-GI diet lost a small amount of weight.

“The study found that that pasta didn’t contribute to weight gain or increase in body fat,” explained Dr. John Sievenpiper, consultant physician at St Michael’s Hospital and the lead author of this godsend of a study. “So contrary to concerns, perhaps pasta can be part of a healthy diet such as low-GI diet. In weighing the evidence, we can now say with some confidence that pasta does not have an adverse effect on body weight outcomes when it is consumed as part of a healthy dietary pattern.”

The researchers did clarify, however, that further research would need to be done to see the effect of pasta when combined with other healthy diets.

But this is definitely good news for pasta-lovers (the human race) in the meantime.

h/t Independent 

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James Chrisman is a News Writer at Thrillist. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @james_chrisman2.