Serious Eats
Pasta Strike in Italy
Italian consumers associations are asking their countrymen to boycott pasta today in a largely symbolic effort to draw attention to the rising costs of noodles.
As is the case with most of these food-price stories these days, biofuel production is being blamed for the high cost of durum wheat, more of which is being diverted into ethanol-making.
Says the BBC: "Pasta is a national dish in Italy, with each Italian eating on average 28 kg (62 lb) of pasta every year."
And perhaps the most apt analogy was the one I just heard on BBC World Service radio: "An Italian without pasta is like an American without hamburgers."
Photograph from iStockphoto.com