Google Says We're Turning to Food Porn to Get Our Pasta Fill

It's 11:45 on a Wednesday night. Unable to sleep, your mind wanders to the wholly forgettable zucchini noodles you spiralized and ate a few hours ago. You silently open the screen to your laptop and cover it with a blanket to hide the glare from your sleeping partner. You begin to listlessly probe the recesses of the internet until you find what your mind truly desires: endless rows of the most sensuous curves you've ever seen, all enveloped in an elegant crimson veil. Your knees become weak and you begin to violently shudder. The last image you see before you drift into a deep sleep is the grinning face of Chef Boyardee.

According to a report on food trends issued by Google, people have been doing deep dives into rigatoni, spaghetti, and other temptresses of the pasta world. For several years now, more and more people are searching for rigatoni, but in the last year alone, searches have risen by over 25 percent. Searches for dishes made of rigatoni—rigatoni carbonara and Bolognese, for example—are on the rise, with other pastas not far behind. We're looking at you, tortellini, linguine, penne, fusilli, and gemelli—literally, in that order. All this searching has led Google to pronounce the obvious: "Pasta Is Back," they say.

OK, pasta is delicious, we all know that. No surprise there. But, as the Washington Post points out, there is something strange about all this online searching: Americans are eating less pasta today than ever before. As the Post points out, "Pasta consumption was lower this past year than it was the year before (by about 1 percent), and lower the year before than it was the year before that (about 1.5 percent lower), according to data from market research firm Nielsen." In general, dried pasta sales are down 6 percent since 2009.

What the hell?

Of course, no one can say for sure why Americans are googling pasta in unprecedented numbers but evidently not eating it, but the popularity of no-carb, lo-carb, Paleo, Atkins-esque diets are a likely suspect. Pasta, after all, is a white, processed carb—which is practically a profanity in today's dietary lingua franca.

So our conclusion is this: Pasta is the new porn. We're searching, but not indulging.

Now if only someone would dream up orecchiette that actually asks to be drawn "like one of your French girls."