It seems only fitting that an article about pasta is lacking meat. I actually like the article but its essentially strings of quotes bound together by a creamy FUD sauce.<p>Companies that sell carbs that feel threatened by dieting trends and internet memes which basically say that all carbs are evil fund research on the health effects of their products and the overall health of the people that consume them.<p>The main criticism of a number of these studies is that the volume of carbs consumed is likely not realistic and made smaller to force the results they want. I really don't know what they expected: "people who consume more calories are more likely to gain weight" isn't a very interesting result. The more interesting question is given a caloric budget of X does using pasta to fill it lead to better, worse, or indifferent results, which seems to be what these studies tackled. Decide for yourself whether you consider the practice shady or whether they're trying to tell people that pasta isn't a food you can have only on your cheat day.<p>Honestly none of the details of the funding or the research matter, no side is seems to be covering anything up. The blame I think actually lies with journalists that misrepresent the results and run headlines like "Pasta Doesn’t Make You Gain Weight" or "Eating Pasta Does Not Cause Obesity" each of which should have lines of asterisks longer than the title itself.