This calls for a pasta party.

Celebrity diet fads and social media have conditioned us to believe that carbs are the enemy of weight loss.

However, thanks to some rather brilliant scientists, we are once again free to fill our faces with tortellini… within reason.

An Italian study found that eating pasta can actually help you avoid obesity, once you don’t go totally overboard.

Researchers at the Department of Epidemiology, IRCCS Neuromed Institute in Isernia surveyed more than 23,000 people and found that enjoying pasta daily in moderation can actually help you reduce your waistline.

People who ate one cup of pasta per meal as part of a healthy Mediterranean diet had a lower BMI than those who avoided Italy’s greatest export entirely.

“By analysing anthropometric data of the participants and their eating habits we have seen that consumption of pasta, contrary to what many think, is not associated with an increase in body weight, rather the opposite.” explains George Pounis, author of the paper and our new favourite person.

“Our data show that enjoying pasta according to individuals’ needs contributes to a healthy body mass index, lower waist circumference and better waist-hip ratio.”

One cup of cooked pasta has 220 calories, one gram of fat and no cholesterol, so it’s not the worst kitchen staple to rely on.

The problem arises when we drench our fresh fettuccine in butter-laden carbonara sauce, top it with crispy bacon and smother it in parmesan, then use slabs of garlic bread to scoop it into our faces. To have your pasta and eat it too, you must stick to simple tomato and garlic sauce and add in some protein like grilled chicken or prawn.

Still; it means you can satiate your carb cravings for once and for all by tucking in to a bowl of fusilli every day, safe in the knowledge it’ll help you firm up your figure.

As Sophia Loren once said, “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”