A Ferrari for everyone

Even worse than eating bland pasta is instant noodles according to UNICEF. Many people, especially in poorer countries, survive on instant packet noodles because it's a cheap, quick and easy substitute for what should have been a balanced diet. Unfortunately, instant noodles are low on essential nutrients and micronutrients like iron and are also protein-deficient while having high fat and salt content. Nutritionists want the instant noodle craze among children to stop. As the world's favourite food, I believe pasta is the centre piece of a family meal that brings joy and nourishment to familiies, communities, and our well being. Unless you make ‘pasta fresca’ [Italian for Fresh Pasta], in your kitchen with all natural and fresh ingredients, you will never really experience the taste and nutrition of authentic fresh pasta because nearly all bought pasta is bland, especially the dried variety on supermarket shelves! Why? Because its most likely made from simply durum wheat semolina and water (with additives, preservatives and colourings to make it last and look authentic); this is especially true for instant noodles! Yet ironically, pasta is the world’s #1 favourite dish! Why? The answer is simple…it’s all in the sauce, and in the case of noodles, artificial flavours! We have become accustomed to adding all sorts of sauces and concoctions with unknown health or nutritional benefits, just to make otherwise nutritional pasta edible and in doing so, making it our #1 favourite dish. Unfortunately, with over 100bn servings per annum, experts say that instant noodles is making millions of children unhealthily thin or overweight in Asia. During my younger days in Italy, my mother used to made spaghetti alla chitarra, or buy fresh made pasta from a local pasta artisan downstairs just in time for our daily traditional Italian ‘pranzo’ (siesta). Pasta Fresca was almost invariably made with ’00’ flour, eggs and a dash of salt. No water. Perhaps some olive oil. Nowadays, pasta Fresca includes all all sorts of additives driven mostly by cost rather than taste or nutrition. Another fact is that fresh pasta takes time, effort and skill to make properly, plus a huge amount of cleaning up! Nobody I know has time for this anymore. We’d rather be relaxing, or doing other more enjoyable things with family and friends. After years of searching and countless tastings, I struggled to find anything that matches the quality, freshness and taste of ultra-fresh pasta made at home, so I decided to merge my Italian heritage, traditions and Mediterranean diet with the latest technology to create POD in partnernship with Australia’s leading university in mechatronics, UTS. POD is a totally new B2B platform, that makes ‘Ready-to-cook’ (RTC), ultra-fresh pasta (UFP) and noodles instantly, plain or flavoured, with whole fresh eggs, GF/vegan, at the touch of a button, using robotics, AI and Internet of Things (IoT). I also created POD to help impove our respect for mother nature through reduced supply chain carbon emissions, no single-package flavour capsules, minimal waste and focus on 'ultra-fresh, only buy what you need'. With POD, my children can choose to eat pasta by itself as a balanced nutritional meal with or without sauce, because UFP offers unlimited choices of fresh flavour ingredients on its own without the need to add sauces for flavour and nutrition. This equally applies to noodles because they are essentially made with the same ingredients as pasta, however in Italy we call noodles ‘vermicelli’. UFP is an explosion of flavour like nothing you’ve ever tasted. The POD model is truly a world first and was awarded an International Patent in April 2023. POD is destined to follow the same success as Nespresso.