Research has demonstrated the “happiness” effect of pasta

We deal with pasta from morning to night therefore we already knew about the “happiness” get by eating pasta, but now we can say it’s official. Research has proven the existence of an emotional and neurophysiological mechanism at the basis of the psychophysical well-being experienced by eating a plate of pasta.

The study is the work of the Behavior & Brain Lab of the Free University of Languages ​​and Communication IULM. This is the first time that scientific research has investigated the emotional-gratifying sphere to understand how, how much and why we are happy when we eat a plate of pasta.

The research was conducted on a representative sample of 40 pasta lovers using 4 different study techniques that allowed us to explore different aspects of the relationship between the subjects and this food:

• neuroanalysis, to understand the states of emotional-cognitive activation during tasting.
• bioanalysis, which through heartbeat and micro-sweating, analyze the level of physiological and emotional activation in front of stimuli;
• the face reader, which analyzes, thanks to face coding, the variations of micro-expressions of the face in front of a stimulus;
• a questionnaire to elaborate the rational experience of the participants and compare it with what emerged from the neurophysiological data.

The survey considered the type of emotional reaction and the degree of involvement achieved at the time of tasting in comparison to some favorite activities (such as listening to music, or watching the Olympics, a soccer or tennis match).

The study confirms that eating pasta causes a positive emotional-cognitive state with results equal to, if not even higher to, those recorded with music and sport. The four parameters of analysis examined also testify that the emotional experience lived during the tasting of your favorite pasta is equal to that generated by the recollection of happy memories!