Well I've just been casting my ever-sceptical eye over this "resistant starch" thing.

First, the study that started all the fuss and which was mentioned here was carried out on ten volunteers.


Ten.


Second, the conditions under which the study was carried out were unnatural. Empty stomachs, just pasta with unspecified sauce, etc. Plenty of potential confounding factors there, as we say...

Third, the study was carried out over a very short period of time.

Now I'm not for a minute saying that there's nothing in this, but let's just say that there's barely enough here for a hypothesis, let alone a scientific conclusion. Looking at various reports on this (the Good Housekeeping one being about the most confused), you'd think that eating pasta (spuds, bread and rice too, the staples of most of the world for hundreds of years if not millennia) suddenly releases a huge rush of sugar into your blood. Well it can't, because neither pasta nor the others contain much if any actual sugar at all, and you have to digest the starch first using an enzyme released into your gut, and that takes time, and you can't absorb it very quickly. A small rise in blood sugar after a meal is the most natural thing in the world, and lots of the stuff in the meal apart from the pasta will be contributing to it. It's normal. It's true enough that high-fibre versions, wholewheat pasta and brown rice for example, take longer for the gut to break down into absorbable sugars. I'll tell you what, if you want a sudden sugar rush, just drink a nice big glass of pure, freshly-squeezed organic orange juice: plenty of immediate sugar calories there! So "healthy"!

Healthy people can easily cope with the digestive speed of the starches in pasta, spuds, rice and bread. There may definitely be something of value in this for people with diabetes, and the usual caveats for people with gluten intolerance, etc., apply. I won't be relying on reheated pasta for my fibre or to absorb fewer calories. If I can be stronger-willed than I currently am I'll eat foods that I know are high in fibre, and I'll eat less food.

By the way, purely subjectively and from an aesthetic point of view, reheated pasta is horrible. It will inevitably be overcooked and will likely go all doughy. Cold pasta, as in those little pots of penne with added gloop, I find it to be thoroughly unappetising and I won't touch it. The Italians are a proud people and they understand pasta. Cooked in water as salty as the Mediterranean Sea until exactly al dente and no more. Never leave the kitchen while the pasta pan is on. Tossed with sauce and not too much of it, never a heap of ragu dumped on top of a pile of spaghetti. Eaten with a fork only, preferably slurped. So we non-Italians murder it by over-cooking it, letting it go cold and, worst of all, reheating it into a soft, collapsing mess.

Let them eat cake...