Ok, not the only reason, but certainly doesn’t help.
Headline of linked article: “Italian researchers say pasta isn’t fattening”
Actual finding: You can eat pasta in moderation as part of an overall healthy diet that includes a lot of fruits and veggies.
You forgot the shirtless selfie.
Reminds me of an old joke… What do you call a 200-lb. Italian woman?
#anorexic
Repost-
Ahh more micro-studies by “science”. 
Of course they never discuss an evolutionary basis , just random poorly conducted observations with no clue how they fit together.
Pasta is refined grains, primates do not eat grains, specifically the homo genus has only been eating grains for 0.3% of their history, so we are more adapted to other foods (meat and plants), therefore pasta is NOT good for homo sapiens (see opportunity cost).
Easy, no pseudo-science study.
For those of you who never been to Italy, Italians are thin and do consume a large portion of grains. My grandmother as an example, her primary diet is bread/pasta/fruits and vegis. So, how is this possible? Eat in moderation, less stress, more leisure time -which results in more moving around, and of course italians have superior genes. Ciao.
Because you don’t have a control group. They are fat and unhealthy relative to optimal humans.
Are there any nations out there who don’t consume grains ?
i agree with you here
of all of the countries I have ever visited, Italians (in restaurants in Italy) have some of the most massive meals (like 5 course meals) to the point where you can’t get up out of your seat for so long that you start ordering a bit more wine until they start bringing out the espressos to get you going again people are usually quite thin though, its amazing maybe its because its so many small towns that are walkable and no one walks at all in USA except to their cube to sit for 10 hours
There you go again…
will nutritionists ever all agree on everything? it seems like one of the few fields where there are so many different sides.
I can imagine some isolated tribe that eats only potatoes or something as carbohydrates. Maybe there is an island of Bros somewhere that only consumes chicken and broccoli.
well by country, spain is the lowest
north korea - highest 
0.3% of their history is still at least several hundred generations. That’s plenty of time for evolutionary processes to make significant changes in our ability to absorb and process nutrients. Indeed, I’ve seen studies of finches that show that you can get evolution to adapt to new food sources (in the case, ground insects die out and tree insects get replaced, but these require longer and narrower beaks) within one or two generations (which for finches was about 5 years, I think). This was a big surprise because most people assumed (as you did), that evolution has to take thouands upon thousands of years.
my humor was lost in translation… Ftr, i dont eat refined grains either, i was just pointing out that its not pasta which is causing obesity here in the states, its the combination of refined foods, sitting all day long, and the high levels of stress.
When i was in canada (toronto), i saw a lot of thin people too - a lot of girls who haven’t been f’d properly either by the way they look, but thats another story.
i think diet is more a direct cause of lifestyle. people are more stressed, sleep less and are induced to eat terrible foods, the terrible foods leads to further stress and less energy. rish and repeat.
I was trying to think who would be the group today or within the last few centuries that might not have eaten many grains. All I could come up with were the Pacific Northwest Indians (or First Nations, if you prefer), whose diet seemed to be mostly salmon and maybe some locally grown vegetables. I might be forgetting something, but I don’t think they live in an area that has any naturally growing grains in any significant quanity.
Yup, there I go again with the correct answer. 
There are no populations that do not eat grains, and other crappy neolithic/industrial foods, not any more. There were the modern hunter-gatherers, those were our best control group, but those are all gone. So, all science from here forward is just nonsense, comparing various unhealthy groups and being confussed why some are less unhealthy, while everyone continues to get more unhealthy. LOL
The formula which I authored --> the smaller the delta between the food eaten, and the food the homo genus has spent the most time eating and eaten in the largest quantities, the healthier the food. This backtests flawlessly. Because it is the right answer!
I’m not offering advice 