Italian scientists may have just saved you gripe with your conscience — when it comes to pasta, anyway.
The research, published Monday in Nutrition and Diabetes, indicates that pasta consumption doesn’t contribute to obesity, and was actually linked to a lower body mass index. BMI is used to determine how much fat a person has based on his or her age, sex, height and weight.
While surveying the eating habits of 23,000 Italians, researchers found that pasta — a staple of the U.S. News-top-ranked Mediterranean diet — did not correlate to waist size or BMI among those studied.
And it’s not the first such study, either: “Our results are in agreement with a relatively recent study examining food and nutrient intakes in association with BMI in 1,794 United States middle-aged adults, showing that pasta intake among other food groups is negatively associated with BMI,” the IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo Neuromed researchers wrote in the study.
Don’t take the findings as license to over-indulge, though. “Both in women and men, the obese population was older and at lower socioeconomic status, had higher waist and hip circumferences and waist-to-hip ratio, and consumed more pasta (grams per day) than normal or overweight participants,” according to Dr. Licia Iacoviello and her fellow researchers wrote in the study.
Each year, the average American eats 20 pounds of pasta, according to the National Pasta Association. Additionally, Americans are responsible for about a quarter of the world’s total pasta consumption — six billion pounds every year.
To conform to dietary guidelines, pasta manufacturers are increasingly offering whole wheat, whole grain and fortified versions of noodles.
8 Ways to Eat Well and Save Money at Home
6 Healthy Foods Worth Splurging On
More from U.S. News
6 Healthy Foods Worth Splurging On
8 Ways to Eat Well and Save Money at Home
6 Ways Obesity Can Weigh on the Brain
Pasta Is Actually Good for You, Research Shows originally appeared on usnews.com
