THE FDA STOLE YOUR BUCATINI.

• Author: Wolfe, Liz
• Position: FOOD

ANY PASTA ENTHUSIAST worth her salt will tell you that bucatini--which is like spaghetti but thicker, and with a hole in the middle--is the gold standard of deliciousness, unrivaled in texture and taste. So naturally, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) felt the need to ruin consumers' bucatini bliss.

The absence of bucatini on store shelves since about April 2020 should be attributed not to the COVID-19 pandemic and related supply chain disruptions but rather to an FDA rule mandating that all pasta contain 13-16.5 milligrams of iron per pound. Imports of De Cecco's bucatini have been stopped at the border since March 30 due to the FDA's discovery that the massive pasta company's product contained only 10.9 milligrams of iron per pound. (Typically, customers would also be able to buy from De Cecco competitor Barilla, but that company cut back production of bucatini during the pandemic.) Although the pasta variety remains legal to import and sell in other countries, U.S. consumers have been left in the lurch as the company attempts to iron out this regulatory wrinkle.

Iron deficiency is a real problem for some Americans, but insufficiently fortified pasta is not the culprit, especially not when abundant sources of nutritional iron can be found throughout the average American grocery store. The fact that the FDA chose to bar access to a product with some iron, but not enough, means it chose to punish a company (and its customers) for doing...