Pasta is bland filler food that’s just used to add inexpensive volume to meals. It tastes like basically nothing, is packed with calories, and is only tolerable based on the the other ingredients that surround it. The only reason it’s so universally beloved is because it’s cheap and easy to make.
Edit: These comments are wildly aggressive lol. This sub is literally for unpopular opinions. You came here knowing you’d disagree, and still decided to get heated over one guy on the internet not liking pasta.
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Yeah ok
Who hurt you it probably wasn’t the pasta
Tell me you’ve only eaten boxed pasta without telling me.
Gotta love the ‘I’ve never had good X’ food opinions. If the pasta you eat has no flavor, then you’re eating shitty pasta….or nuked your taste buds already.
Another day, another Reddit user on top of a virtual mountain shouting to the world that they’ve never had a real plate of well-made pasta.
The only different is that this time I could have known you had no idea about food, culture, or food culture, even by just reading your username. Well done!
You’ve just described every carbohydrate (poorly). They’re meant to have lots of calories to give you energy to get through the day. And they basically all taste bland on their own but when paired with other flavours they become delicious
Eat better pasta. Try pasta made of other stuff, not just regular wheat flour. Learn to make a good sauce.
Are you eating plain pasta without salt or anything?
Jesus, someone in Italy just dropped dead because of what u said. This is truly a bonkers opinion
I disagree on the bland part, as you can technically fill them with lots of flavorful meats, cheeses and veggies. But pasta definitely adds calories to the meal — and all those amazing sauces certainly don’t help the situation much.
Wait till OP learns about rice
I think my dad’s argument for not liking rice because “it’s for poor people” has more merit than yours. LOL
ETA: I do not share his views.
You spelled rice wrong.
Well… Yeah. That’s what starchy staple foods tend to be. They’re filler. It’s their purpose in our diet.
i hate this take. take my damn upvote
Italians don’t tend to eat huge, heavy, saucy, calorie laden Olive Garden-style portions of pasta the way Americans or other foreigners do. They usually eat a fairly small portion of pasta, often as a first course and then meat or fish afterwards.
If it tasted like “nothing” I doubt Italian food would have become one of the world’s most popular foods. Problem is that people don’t know how to make it and also eat too much of it.
I’ll take Asian noodles over Italian pasta any day of the week, and I’ve been to both Tuscany and Kyoto. Hell, Italian food overall is egregiously overrated.
The mouth on you! 😐
It doesn’t taste as good just chugging marinara sauce.
You are correct when you posit that pasta is both mostly flavorless and calorie dense. Just like every other culture’s primary carbohydrate. That is the point, honestly. Potatoes, rice, oats, barley, wheat, and essentially every other base carbohydrate have mellow flavors that require other foods to taste good.
agreed, potatoes > pasta
Most carbs are pretty flavorless in general. There’s a reason we season them or add sauces to flavor them.
They are designed to be calories dense. The reason Pasta is good is because when made correctly, they absorb and hold the sauce extremely well.
Rice on its own is pretty boring, but once it starts soaking up the wonderful sauces it’s served it, it becomes delicious.
You can keep going for most carbs, even probably the most flavorful carb in bread, often sees it used in many ways to mix other flavors in to it.
Take my upvote, mate. My Nonna made fresh pasta and it filled my soul.
Ngl the way you talk about it as “filler food, calorie dense, and diet busting” makes me think you might have some kind of mild eating disorder. Food in general isn’t your enemy, eating the correct amounts of different foods is whats important to maintain a healthy diet. You’re not going to ruin a diet if you eat 1 appropriately sized pasta dish.
I wish I felt more like this, but it’s my ultimate comfort food. It’s the texture and mouth feel for me (when it is cooked al dente, anyway; I can’t stand mushy pasta). It definitely needs sauce of some sort, but a well paired pasta and sauce (plus whatever other ingredients) is heavenly for me. I’ve always loved it ever since I was a kid, and it’s the one food that never gets old for me. It is calorie dense and full of carbs, though, which sucks for me! 🤣 It’s so quick and easy to prepare and so versatile, too, so it’s very tempting to make it more often than I should.
But then you are just eating a bowl of tomato sauce… how fun. is that?
But couldn’t the same thing be said for a lot of foods? Plenty of foods taste meh or even like nothing before you add seasonings or sauces or other ingredients in general.
I don’t enjoy the taste of plain pasta noodles either but I also wouldn’t just want to eat various pasta sauces like soup. They add good texture and eatability. And it’s not like they’re junk food levels of calorie dense.
if your pasta has no flavor that’s on you, boil it with a little chicken stock powder
Someone hasn’t ever had good pasta.
I’m sitting in my car on dark and cold night. I turn to my right and see a family sitting and enjoying a meal at the Olive Garden. “Pathetic,” I think to myself, “Don’t they know that pasta is just empty calories. Doesn’t even have any flavor on its own. Those idiots haven’t even considered the opportunity cost. Think of how many more servings of meat sauce you could have if you weren’t filling up on tubes of eggy pasta!”
I shake my head sadly before pulling out my hip flask and taking a giant swig of Alfredo sauce. Just another lonely night as the smartest man in the world.
I can’t believe you eat sticky rice if you hate pasta.
Yo every damn day in this sub y’all are just coming for us Italians!
Ravioli ?? Tortellini??
Why are calories the enemy? We need calories. Food is supposed to be filling….
Sure, you can argue about nutrient density, but that’s often not the argument. Let’s move on from demonizing calories and carbs when they exist for a reason and have a place in our diets and when not everyone is obsessed with eating as little calories as possible.
Pasta is amazing. Congratulations on a truly unpopular opinion, even though it is a terrible one.
I actually agree… I enjoy a good plate of spaghetti bolognese, but even better is a bowl of the sauce and some crusty garlic bread.
I’ll eat pasta with nothing on it
this is anti italian discrimination
Calories are the reason that we eat. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy in a normal diet.
Yeah sorry bud this is just an incorrect opinion.
Really hit it home with the last sentence that people only like it bc it’s cheap and easy to make. I could win a $1billion lottery and I’d still be eating pasta
That’s what the sauce and protein is for, knob.
dude just described “food”.
It’s literally the essence, the foundation of the Mediterranean diet, which was ranked as the number 1 diet in the world by US news and world report.
I agree although fresh pasta can be amazing. But dried pasta is trash compared to other staple carbs. I’d rather have meat with rice than meat with pasta 99 times out of 100.
My bigger beef with pasta though is that for the most part it only exists in the refined white flour variety, and whole wheat pasta doesn’t taste great and is too expensive. Conversely, whole wheat bread and brown rice taste great.
Everyone knows this. That’s it’s purpose in life. Aw with all other carb sides.
I’ve been to super fancy places, famous for their homemade pasta… it’s exactly the same as a box of $0.99 dry pasta from the grocery store. I will never order pasta at a restaurant it’s such a rip off.
I think you just need to learn how to cook better
In the words of Gordon Ramsey “in my experience, the richer someone is the more cheese they add to their dishes and the poorer they are the more they add noodles.” There’s your explanation for why the vast majority of dishes in the world have noodles. Pasta noodles are literally inexpensive filler food.
I used to live pasta but hated the calories. Recently I decided to make a pasta and ith everything except the pasta… It was great. All meat, sauce, cheese and veggie
Poverty food from a time when people had a serious issue with acquiring enough food.
A lot of our modern cuisine stems from the dietary habits of peasants who had to consume cheap and readily available foods to get by.
This sub really needs to ban food opinions.
Do you also prefer your sandwiches with no bread?
Disagree.
One of my favourite things to eat is al dente pasta, with a little olive oil and pepper, before i add sauce and have the actual meal.
The point of pasta is to be a canvas to the sauce of the dish. That’s the entire point.
And it does it better than arguably any other grain.
upvoted because unpopular
Have you tried adding sauce to it
I’d be fascinated to hear you defend rice and bread if you like those things.
Weird take.
Yeah. It’s bread. Or more accurately a cracker. Flour and egg.
The sauce is what tastes amazing.
I bet this guys overcooks his pasta till it’s soft and doesn’t even season the water 🤌
Just eat the sauce bro. It’s basically chilli
Maybe when you make it lmao
It has about the same calories as chicken and that doesn’t taste too great unseasoned either.
It’s okay if you don’t know how to cook buddy, you can learn
Sounds like someone who never had fresh h made pasta. But if you mean the shitty dry pasta from supermarkets then yeah, they are not worth it.
Now I am starting to understand why we burnt people at the stake
I also hate pasta but this is an….interesting opinion
>The only reason it’s so universally beloved is because it’s cheap and easy to make.
Man have I got news about every comfort food on earth for you.
It’s funny how you got all defensive with your edit. People are clowning you because you have a stupid opinion which is only tangentially unpopular. Understandable, well reasoned unpopular opinions on r/unpopularopinon get upvoted. Your is just poorly reasoned and quite frankly unfair.
Most carbs are inexpensive calories used to add volume to meals. If you are afraid about it, you could just do smaller portions.
Many foods are “tolerable only based on the other ingredients that surround them”. It’s quite bizzarre to single out pasta because it doesn’t taste good without a sauce, which is the intended way to be consumed. At this point you might as well get mad because pasta is inedible if you don’t boil it first.
Your most ridiculous statement is that “pasta is loved because it’s cheap and easy to make”.
Pasta is loved because it’s the only proper way to eat may delicious sauces/dressings that go with it. No one eats carbonara sauce alone.
There are plenty of hard pastas to make: cacio e pepe, nerano, gricia etc. Also, if you really had worked in a restaurant, you would have noticed that people are quite open to pay high restaurant prices for a good pasta. Kinda goes against your point about people liking pasta only ‘cos it’s cheap.
Pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, barley, wheat… and on and on. Lot of things don’t have a ton of flavor going on until you cook them.
I guess whether it’s “worth” it depends on many factors including the rest of your diet, energy levels and ability and willingness to cook food.
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Oh shit
The Italians, Italian- Americans and the wannabes are about to have a cry baby fest -triggered to the max meltdown
Wear a helmet, sprinkle some sage around you, protect yourself
Yeah I can never justify the calories for pasta. Except maybe lobster Mac n cheese. But that’s like a once a year on your anniversary dinner food lol
I like smooth foods it’s safe 🤷🏻♀️
Agreed! I only like pasta for mac & cheese. There’s so many better options to pair your food with (rice, veggies, etc.).
yup. there’s no real reason to eat it unless you’re EXTREMELY active. its glycemic load is also garbage and its nutritional profile blows. I cut out eating white carbs with meals the way a lot of folks do, whether is rice, pasta, tortillas, bread etc. etc. a while ago and I don’t miss them.
Absolutely agree! Pasta has no flavour and is not healthy. No reason to eat it other than if you can’t afford other foods, yet it’s treated as a delicacy
YESSS!! I have always felt this way and people disagree. I also think the same about rice and most breads.
Upvote for unpopular
why do you think there are so many ‘italian’ restaurants, profit margins are insane! it costs pennies to cook pasta/pizza and if you you stingy on toppings you make 90+% profit.
I agree with you! I also don’t like bread or rice for similar reasons.
The fascists said the same thing about pasta in Italy in WWII 🤔
Mouth feel is very important imo and it provides a good amount of it plus some needed carbs!
I agree 100% pasta sucks and is not filling or satisfying to eat. More so than any other carb, I’ll eat it and be hungry an hour later.
There’s definitely times where I have no interest in pasta of any kind. And when I’m up for it there’s only certain types because texture is a thing for me
But when I’m up for it it’s like I can’t get enough.
However, when I’ve tried fresh authentic pasta at a restaurant I really didn’t like it. Apparently that’s how it’s supposed to be but yeah there was like zero flavor. Even in the sauces and stuff.
It’s like anything else. It’s a conduit for carrying other stuff into your mouth that’s not as readily available / plentiful / cheap etc than the base carb.
You might as well hate water for coffee lol
I share your opinion. Upvote to counter the abuse you’re getting
I know a guy who feels almost identical to you. He genuinely doesn’t like pasta, so far as to prepare rice for himself when the family is eating spaghetti and red sauce. Me having Italian heritage and having grown up eating pasta my entire life, I was appalled. But I have come to realize that people are vastly different, with different tastes, and that makes life interesting. You do you man!
Of course pasta is bland and boring. That’s why everyone culture with noodles smothers it is delicious sauces! It’s just cute boiled bread.
I HATE PASTA 😃 everyone i know hates me for this opinion. Its lovely to see others like me lol
I like pasta sause I can’t just eat pasta sause can I
It’s just noodles… You eat it plain or what?
Its as if millions of Italians cried out in horror and then were suddenly silenced.
I agree. In theory it’s the same as bread, potatoes, and other simple carbs like that, but in my opinion it really isn’t as enjoyable as those two things and lacks a pleasing flavor/texture unless surrounded by delicious ingredients. I’d rather eat buttered bread or potatoes than buttered noodles.
I still like it. But I agree. Team Pasta As A Side Dish Only all the way. I cannot believe some people eat a whole “meal” of just noodles and sauce.
Rice > Pasta
I’m with you, OP!!
i like pasta but theyre basically a scam on restaurants especially the specialty ones.
You knew you’re posting an unpopular opinion and would get roasted for it yet you still got bothered enough to edit your post to make some useless psa
Yeah, that’s how food works. You can say the same about potatoes, rice, yams and all the other base staples people eat.
Blasphemy!
Take my upvote you spaghetti bully.
Pasta often tastes like nothing because people don’t put remotely enough salt in their cooking water.
Salt isn’t just for saltyness it brings out the flavor of food.
That’s… kinda the point. Why do you eat bread ins sandwich? Or rice? Or mashed potatoes? Or tortillas for burritos? Or chips?
It’s cheap, it’s a vessel for sauces and other flavors to be added into it, and it’s a filler for calories. That’s like saying “the water in the soup isn’t worth drinking because it’s a bland filler/holder for the veggies and meat”
I’d say this is less an unpopular opinion and just a realization about basic food. Unless you’re suddenly swearing off pasta because of this. Which is dumb and wastes future experiences with many delicious meals
I agree with you. I do like some types of pasta but it’s definitely on the lower rungs of superior filler carbs ladder.
“You came here knowing you’d disagree, and still decided to get heated”
You came to a sub where the whole point is to share opinions that will cause heated disagreements, and you’re surprised enough by the result to criticise it?