Take this with a huge grain of salt, but I read that Italians only claimed pasta as a national dish because Mussolini pushed it- some kind of effort towards a national identity.
Marinetti insisted that pasta induced "lassitude, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity and neutralism" in the Italian people, and he and Mussolini were pretty tight. There's also a quote attributed to Mussolini: "A nation of spaghetti-eaters cannot restore Roman civilization." The material reason seems to be that Italy had to import huge amounts of wheat for pasta, at odds with the nationalist/"self-sufficient" character of the fascist ideology.
Take this with a huge grain of salt, but I read that Italians only claimed pasta as a national dish because Mussolini pushed it- some kind of effort towards a national identity.
Marinetti insisted that pasta induced "lassitude, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity and neutralism" in the Italian people, and he and Mussolini were pretty tight. There's also a quote attributed to Mussolini: "A nation of spaghetti-eaters cannot restore Roman civilization." The material reason seems to be that Italy had to import huge amounts of wheat for pasta, at odds with the nationalist/"self-sufficient" character of the fascist ideology.