> the popular 21st-century view that heavy pasta meals leave diners feeling equally heavy and lethargic. Pasta gets a bad rap unfairly, I think. A few years ago over the course of ~18 months, I lost 100 lbs. I ate pasta almost every day when I did this. One problem, particularly in the US, is that portion sizes are so large. This affects much more than just pasta. But in the American mind, a serving of pasta is often…
As an Italian, my experience is that I can’t have any satisfaction with less than 180g of pasta. Therefore I only eat it like once a week and make it a little event. Growing up I had similar portions almost on a daily basis and I was never overweight. Trick: do sports. A lot.
Portions with 125g of uncooked pasta feel fine to me. That‘s 450 calories. Plus sauce (200 on the low end, 350 calories on the high end, depending on what exactly you want to eat – 200 calories would be something like a 400g can of tomatoes, garlic, onions, some olive oil) and cheese (100 calories for 25g Parmesan) you end up with a meal that‘s between 750 and 900 calories.
That between a normal and large-ish meal, though in both cases not exactly huge. Definitely something you could conceivably eat every day without much trouble, though I do agree that something with less carbs would probably be a bit more filling.
125g uncooked dried pasta should be about 280g cooked pasta.
Don’t get me wrong, I can eat 180g of uncooked pasta no problem. But that tends to go right up to the line of feeling very full.