Pasta is an intercontinental comfort food that transcends its strong associations with Italian cuisines. Yet the gluten-free trend, coupled with the huge explosion in popularity of Asian cuisines with rice, yam, and mung bean noodle pastas converged to open the gates on a flood of other nonfarinaceous pastas. These cover the noodle gamut with pastas made from other corn, rice, and other grains, to pastas from beans, chickpeas, and peas, to such envelope-pushing pastas as those made from broccoli, carrot, and cauliflower.

To find out what accounts for the perennial popularity of pasta, and where might it be headed, David Feder, Executive Editor-Technical for Prepared Foods media, takes a look at the trends in pasta and all things noodles, with Ann Contos, Senior Product Development Manager and Yury Krasilovsky, Executive Chef, Foodservice R&D for Barilla America, Inc., makers of pastas, pestos, and sauces since 1877.