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Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

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Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#251

Post by jey »

jldugger wrote: post #79
ljf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no idea how much Niacin is added in America, but you can have too much. Since we don't eat much corn here in Europe, packing food unnecessarily full of this supplement could be dangerous to health: Niacin Toxicity Symptoms of toxicity include: Flushing of the skin, primarily on the face, arms, and chest *This side effect may occur at doses as low as 30 mg/day. Itching. Nausea. Vomiting.

I'm really not sure where that citation is coming from. It's a Google web answer but the source has no citation. Wikipedia lists a textbook, rather than anything from NCBI, and I'm too lazy to dig further. A corn torilla or slice of bread in the US typically has 1-2 mg of niacin, and a daily recommendation of around 16mg. 3 oz (85 grams) of "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of the stuff[1], and…

> "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of [niacin]

That's off by a factor of 1000x -- it says 10.3 milligrams.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#253

Post by pivo »

gambiting wrote: post #185
jiofih wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the very opposite reaction. The snobbery of “the only pasta worth eating”, which is an insult to the diversity of Italian cuisine, deflated me right at the start. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but also that there is a hint of self-deprecating truth to it... think I’m getting old.

I also hugely disliked the style and tone of the article. I finished it thinking "well, I guess anyone can call themselves a journalist nowadays". The humor was out of place too, just coming across as snobbish most of the time, even though I can tell what the author is doing. It's just....too much. But hey, other people like it so who am I too judge ;-)

For me this had a David Sedaris, obsessive-compulsive writing style that I ended up hugely enjoying, though I admit I didn't get it at first and almost gave up reading. The fact that she opened a Freedom of Information request with the FDA about noodles while acknowledging that the agency was most likely preoccupied with the pandemic made me laugh out loud.

If this were just a matter-of-fact reportage on a particular type of pasta shortage I doubt it'd hold much interest for anyone. The whole enjoyment for me was the gonzo reporting style of someone going off the rails about the shortage of a particular type of noodle.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#254

Post by julianlam »

vzaliva wrote: post #252

Can somebody post TLDR summary for me? I am curious but do not care about the subject enough finish the article. Was it use as a straws? Or "enriched flour" classification?

Author wants bucatini, Bowen Yang also wants bucatini.

Author contacts lots of people, gets caught up in a potential bucatini conspiracy. Maybe too many millennials used it as straws. Maybe competitors pushed De Cecco out of the country using the FDA guidelines, for reasons to be determined.

Most likely, pasta makers cut production of specialty pasta (bucatini being one) in favour of ramping up production of your run of the mill macaronis, spaghettis, etc. due to COVID and pasta hoarding.

Wait a bit, they'll come back.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#255

Post by rsynnott »

jiofih wrote: post #179
sam_goody wrote: post #97

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud. Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect their monopoly, and will coerce the government into helping them. I read an article about import taxes on sugar that were created to keep out competition, and as a result everything uses corn syrup. Other examples abound. Unfortunately, the solution of governmen…

I had the very opposite reaction. The snobbery of “the only pasta worth eating”, which is an insult to the diversity of Italian cuisine, deflated me right at the start. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but also that there is a hint of self-deprecating truth to it... think I’m getting old.

I think it's deliberately hyperbolic; I don't see any reason to read it as the author literally believing that.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#256

Post by yowzadave »

sam_goody wrote: post #97

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud. Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect their monopoly, and will coerce the government into helping them. I read an article about import taxes on sugar that were created to keep out competition, and as a result everything uses corn syrup. Other examples abound. Unfortunately, the solution of governmen…

One aspect of the article's chatty style that I liked was that it gave a glimpse into how "reporting" sausage gets made: calling experts up on the phone to try to get them to tell you a story, filing information requests, looking up publicly available (but obscure) information. Even though the author is self-deprecating, by the end I was impressed by her persistence and ability to dig up real new information. I sometimes wish more straight-laced reporting would be more forthcoming with these kinds of details.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#257

Post by karlkatzke »

pietrovismara wrote: post #100
legerdemain wrote: post #49

The article mentions the fact that the FDA calls all legal pasta "enriched macaroni." The article also mentions trade groups pressuring the FDA to set arbitrary standards on pasta to keep out imports of Asian noodles. The article fails to mention what the FDA calls Asian noodle products. It calls them "alimentary paste."

> enriched macaroni That must be the lamest way of defining pasta I've ever heard. Whoever named it like that doesn't deserve italian pasta (/s)

Fitting for a yankee doodle dandy, though.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#259

Post by imajoredinecon »

rat87 wrote: post #239
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think "access" looks like? There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip.…

> They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. I think you're vastly underestimating the impact of lobbying and overestimating the cost https://www.npr.org/transcripts/708195702 Tax Professor wants to try to get a policy (automatically filled out tax returns for CA state taxes)he thinks will be good for t…

Reading that transcript actually left me thinking the system worked okay in this particular case, even though it led to a bad (in my opinion) policy outcome. The money bought access, not results: in the end, the legislators who voted against largely it did so because of personal belief the policy was bad or because of political pressure from an important campaign group (+), not because of money from Intuit (and it didn't take too much in absolute terms---$140K at full price---to equalize the lobbying power of a single-person pet project with that of a multibillion-dollar company with a strong vested interest in seeing the legislation defeated).

(+): I'm not personally a Grover Norquist fan, but he's influential because a lot of Americans really don't like taxes, and the argument that people will be more opposed to taxes if they're more burdensome does seem internally consistent.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#260

Post by 404mm »

looperhacks wrote: post #258

Very interesting article. I was quite perplexed, since I have never heard of Bucatini before, but know some sorts of pasta - at least the most popular ones. Turns out, that in Germany, these are called "Makkaroni"! (We call macaroni "Makkaroni" too)

I went through this a few months ago. I found some at Kroger. I missed this pasta from my youth years in Europe.
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