In defense of "pastasciutta"

Here's a little piece on artisanal pasta from my other blog  www.iCookCabo.blogspot.com :

The kneading of flour and water was perhaps one of man's first actions if you look back through his history. The first bread was simply dough made from flour and water without yeast: even today, among some primitive populations, the use of yeast is completely unknown. However, all cultures have known the art of kneading, even if they have not all used the same ingredients, which are usually chosen according to what is available locally: the flour of various cereals either mixed with water alone or enriched with eggs and perhaps oil, and so on.Pasta casalinga ( home made pasta ), or so called fresh pasta, now generally means egg pasta; it contains one egg for every 2 1/2 ounces of American all-purpose white flour and is extremely nutritious. Why not indulge in it every now and then in order to rediscover forgotten aromas and flavours especially since you can acquire readily through purveyors like us?Some have objected that home-made pasta is a food that is hardly suitable for the sedentary life of modern man because it contains too many calories: in fact a normal plate of pastasciutta contains about 360 calories, most of which are derived from carbohydrates, with only a few coming from protein.The most up to date nutritional science has now accertained that pasta is not fattening if it's properly seasoned and and included in a correct and well balanced diet. Indeed, it is advisable to introduce pasta into the daily diet because wheat flour, especially "natural" wheat flour that has not been treated chemically during refining and that has been cultivated using natural fertilizers, contains minerals salts and many important vitamines including some from B and E groups. Moreover, pasta made with one egg ( or more ) every2 1/2 ounces of flour has considerable nutritional value. If soft -grain wheat flour is less rich in proteins than the hard-grain durum wheat flour used in making industrial pastas, the deficiency is largely compensated by the nutritious substances contained in the eggs: albumin, other proteins of animal origin, and fatty substances.After the above considerations, it is easy to realize how important this food is in our diet. If one also considers that fresh pasta is mainly seasoned with foods that are also very nourishing - cheeses and other such ingredients- or that it may be stuffed with succulent meat, fish and vegetable fillings, one can definitively conclude that it has great chances of becoming a dish with unmatchable flavour, within everyone's means and ready to satisfy even the fussiest and most refined palates.