Pasta: The universal medicine

I've got a secret. Well, more accurately, the muscles-and-mustaches guys from The Joy of Pasta (Simac's Cuisine Collection, 1982-- a little new for the blog, but so good we'll pretend it's not) have a secret. There's a surprise booklet at the end of their cookbook.

It has no recipes, though it does prominently feature pasta.

It's a "nutrition" booklet, illustrated with cartoon-y pasta, explaining how pasta is good for pretty much any medical condition ever. If you're sick, all you need is an angry tomato-eggplant hybrid and some stoned pasta. The rigatoni and the ravioli seem to be feeling pretty chill, but I think the bucatini's mind is totally blown over the thought that pasta could be the answer to all the world's problems.

Who is pasta good for? Everybody!

It's all just a balancing act! Get it?

Even preggers pasta or little Petey pasta in his baseball cap should fuel up by eating... pasta? The cartoons actually seem to be advocating cannibalism if you think about it.

But seriously, pasta is for everybody! A bit pudgy? Well, pasta shouldn't be the problem, and it might be the solution:

I love the indignant look on chunky pasta man's face! I'm not sure why he's hanging out on a playground full of pasta kids on swings or running around with forks, just waiting for the least excuse to poke portly pasta people in the butt. Something tells me this kid might have the right idea to encourage that guy to move on...

In any case, the cure for obesity is to eat only 3 to 3-1/2 ounces of fresh pasta a day, and to make it with vegetable pulp or juice. (Celery pasta, anyone?)

A consistent theme of this nutrition booklet is that pasta is good both for one problem and its opposite.

I'll bet you can guess what people who are too gaunt (rather than too rotund) should eat:

Yep! Pasta will help with gauntness too. Perhaps more surprisingly, thin people are supposed to stay away from rich sauces, just as the heavy-set are. They should eat watercress juice or raspberries as appetite stimulants.

I think the linguine blowing in the wind is a bit skeptical of these theories... Either that, or it's sad that its plan to asphyxiate the rigatoni bully boa-constrictor-style has been undone by a stiff breeze.

Pasta isn't just good for weight-related issues. It's got real heart, too.

Well, it's good for heart disorders, anyway, if a book whose sole purpose is to sell pasta-making equipment is to be believed. Just ask Dr. Penne. (At least, I assume he's penne. For a second I thought he was a finger, but then I saw the "nail" was just the interior of the pasta tube.) Don't ask Dr. Penne about how smoking affects heart health because he doesn't want to hear it, but if your heart is enlarged to such an extent that a tomato takes one look at you and thinks it's gonna blast some sauce, then Dr. Penne will happily encourage you to eat pasta made with lettuce and cabbage juice. Wait a minute. Maybe the tomato is reacting to the dinner recommendation.

When I saw the next picture, I thought the text would proclaim pasta to be a cure for hot flashes:

But no, apparently hypertension is the ailment that will make steam spew out of your dilated head, your tongue grow to over half your body length, and your eyes to comically pop right out of your head like the eyes on springs in novelty glasses.

Guess what you should do for hypertension.

No, it's not mutter an incantation to Venus and leave an offering of rose and myrtle upon the hearth.

You have to make your pasta dough with cabbage juice! (Or strawberries, olives, and grapes. Yum!)

And keeping up the theme of pasta being the cure for opposing ills, what about hypotension?

Have some pasta! And since pasta is such a well-known cure for hypotension that the book doesn't even have to explain it, also have some water in which barley has been boiled.

I'm less interested in the cure than in what is going on in this picture. The rigatoni fainted from its low blood pressure, but what's going on with the pasta on the top of the ladle? Was it so frightened by the fainting rigatoni that it was trying to get away, or is just the most annoying, least helpful friend ever, ready to slide down the handle and bounce off rigatoni's belly just because it can't stand for anyone else to be the center of attention for even one minute?

The Joy of Pasta wants you to know that pasta is good for all life stages, too. Did you know, for example, that children can eat pasta?

Yeah, I know that's a real mind-blower. Who would have imagined that kids would eat noodles? In keeping with the idea that the pasta dough should be more than just boring water and flour, the text reminds us that meat baby food makes a great mix-in for finicky kids.

(I love the roller skate in the background, which looks waaay too big for the little pasta kids. Is it some kind of vehicle for them to ride around in? Yay for a roller skate full of pasta. And does the pasta tot in the center of the picture look so pissed because it's being used as the teeter totter's fulcrum, or is the teeter totter just floating in midair?)

Pasta is good for the old and toothless, too.

I like the apparent love story in this one, with the old lady with the enormous nose throwing down a flower to express her admiration for the older gent who appears to have retired from the Ministry of Silly Walks. (The ditalini kids on the end seem to be in on the joke, but the one in the middle didn't know it was going to be on camera and is self-conscious about whatever is sprouting out of its head.)

The booklet taught me a bit about the pasta life span, though I must admit I've got more questions than anything else...

How quickly does pasta reproduce, and what's the method? The pasta has not only two toddlers, a tiny baby, and a bucatini on the way, but they're also being joined by a terrified, parachute-equipped pasta baby freshly dropped from something. (A stork? A Cobra plane that G.I. Joe just blew up? No one knows.)

I thought people made pasta, and that was the whole point of buying a pasta maker and a book about said pasta maker, but apparently some noodles are self-replicating. I'm feeling just as confused about this as a diaper-clad pasta baby plummeting from the sky... but at least I love the visuals. Hope you did too!