But if you needed yet another reason to eat pasta, queen of Italian cooking Giada De Laurentiis (she even has her own line of pasta) just shared a hot tip that’ll have you running to boil a pot of water.
In a recent Instagram video, Giada revealed that eating leftover pasta is actually good for you. “When the pasta cools, the carbs turn into resistant starch, which is easier to digest, which means you have a lower blood sugar spike and it’s better for your gut,” she explained.
Let’s break it down further. Pasta is considered a simple starch, and, according to University Hospitals, chilling and reheating pasta transforms it into a high-fiber food. When you eat freshly cooked, hot pasta, the starches in it are quickly converted to sugars in the body, which causes your glucose levels to spike. However, when you refrigerate it, a new chemical reaction occurs to the molecules in the pasta — the natural starches transform to resistant starches, a type of fiber found in many plant-based foods.
Foods that are high in fiber take longer to digest, thus releasing sugars into the body more slowly. This slower digestion process can also help you feel fuller for longer. While this hack works whether you eat the pasta cold or reheated, it’s not just pasta — the same thing happens to other simple carbohydrates, like rice and potatoes.