Pasta Facts

Shapes

When making delicious pasta dishes, be sure to choose a pasta shape and sauce that complement each other.

Value

Busy families continue to search for foods that are healthy, satisfying and economical – and they don’t need to look further than the pasta aisle.

• Pasta offers real value. With eight servings per pound, pasta is a smart and healthy way of stretching the dollar.
• Pasta feeds the family, pads the wallet. The average price of a one pound box of pasta in 2010 is $1.51.
• Pasta continues to be among the most affordable foods available.  When paired with a jar of pasta sauce, you can feed a family of four for less than $5.00.
• You can enjoy pasta on any budget, and thanks to its incredible versatility, you can have a different and delicious low-cost meal every day of the week.
• Keeping pantry staples like dry pasta on hand is always helpful, especially for those days when the cupboard is a bit bare. No need for pricey takeout! It’s easy to make a delicious, healthy meal in minutes that will satisfy your whole family.

Fun Facts

History

• The Chinese are on record as having eaten pasta as early as 5,000 B.C.

• Contrary to popular belief, Marco Polo did not discover pasta. Although Marco Polo wrote about eating Chinese pasta, he probably didn’t introduce pasta to Italy. In fact, there’s evidence suggesting the Etruscans made pasta as early as 400 B.C.
• Greek mythology suggests that the Greek God Vulcan invented a device that made strings of dough (the first spaghetti!)
• In the 13th century, the Pope set quality standards for pasta.
• Pasta made its way to the New World through the English, who discovered it while touring Italy. Colonists brought to America the English practice of cooking noodles at least one half hour, then smothering them with cream sauce and cheese.
• Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing macaroni to the United States. He fell in love with a certain dish he sampled in Naples, then promptly ordered crates of “macaroni,” along with a pasta-making machine, sent to the States in 1789 when he returned home after serving as ambassador to France.
• It was not until the 1700’s until tomato sauce was included with spaghetti in Italian kitchens.

• The first American pasta factory was opened in Brooklyn, New York, in 1848, by a Frenchman named Antoine Zerega. Mr. Zerega managed the entire operation with just one horse in his basement to power the machinery. To dry his spaghetti, he placed strands of the pasta on the roof to dry in the sun.
• Christopher Columbus, one of Italy’s most famous pastaphiles, was born in October, National Pasta Month.

Cooking and Eating

• One billion pounds of pasta is about 212,595 miles of 16-ounce packages of spaghetti stacked end-to-end — enough to circle the earth’s equator nearly nine times.
• The average person in Italy eats more than 51 pounds of pasta every year.  The average American eats abuot 19.8 pounts of pasta annually.
• The most popular pasta shapes in the U.S. are Spaghetti, thin spaghetti, Elbows, Rotelle, Penne, Lasagna
• Cooked al dente (al-DEN-tay) literally means “to the tooth,” which is how to test pasta to see if it is properly cooked. The pasta should be a bit firm, offering some resistance to the tooth, but tender.
• Most pasta is made using wheat products mixed with water.  Other types of pasta are made using ingredients such as rice, barley, corn, and beans.
• Egg noodles contain egg; almost all other dry pasta shapes do not. By federal law, a noodle must contain 5.5 percent egg solids to be called a noodle. So without egg, a noodle really isn’t a noodle.
• To cook one billion pounds of pasta, you would need 2,021,452,000 gallons of water – enough to fill nearly 75,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Production

• There are more than 600 pasta shapes produced worldwide.
• The total amount of dry pasta consumed in the U.S. in 2009 was 1.4 billion pounds