Pasta is thought to have originated more than 3,000 years ago with the ancient Etruscans. It was a baked blend of wheat and egg paste, not boiled. Ancient Greeks and Romans are thought to have further developed dishes. Pasta became more popular throughout the world as Italian explorers sailed to new worlds. But it was Italian immigration that really sparked widespread consumption.

In 1867, the year that Canada was born, an immigrant from Vedano, Italy — Carlo Onorato Catelli — established the country’s first pasta plant on Saint-Paul Street in Old Montreal. Catelli started making macaroni and vermicelli by hand and became the first manufacturer to introduce machines in 1920, which allowed them to expand the product line to include spaghetti, and unique, breakthrough pasta shapes like rigatoni and penne. Today, Catelli is Canada’s largest manufacturer of pasta and its 280 employees produce more than 150 million boxes of pasta at their plant in Montreal each year.

While today’s pasta looks remarkably the same, it is the scientific breakthroughs on the health and wellness front that have ensured that Canada’s most loved food remains one of the most nutritious and economical ways to feed families.

“Catelli has taken one of Canada’s favourite dishes – pasta—and reinvented it by adding healthy ingredients like inulin, a naturally occurring carbohydrate extracted from chicory root. This has allowed them to create a white pasta, Catelli Smart, with three times the fibre of a regular white pasta, making it a favourite of moms and kids alike,” said Rob Kowal, president of Kriscor & Associates, a Canadian company that helps manufacturers find ways of incorporating the latest nutritional benefits into food products.

As chair of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Institute of Food and Science Technology, Mr. Kowal confirms that food producers are always looking for ways to meet the challenge of incorporating ground-breaking natural and functional ingredients into the foods people eat every day. “Catelli continues to be a food industry innovator and Smart pasta is an example of how far pasta has come. The nutritional and health benefits are built right into Smart pasta, making it a food innovation that Canadians are literally eating right up.”

www.newscanada.com

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