Why You Should Think Twice Before Ordering Carbonara At An Italian Restaurant

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Think Twice Before Ordering This Salt Bomb From An Italian Restaurant By Jonathan Kesh Oct. 7, 2025 7:20 pm EST

Your average homemade or restaurant pasta is likely less salty than some of those unhealthy canned pastas you should avoid . Still, some pasta dishes lean heavy on sodium, and pasta carbonara is notorious for it. But is it actually that bad? We spoke to Jessica Montanelli, the Tuscan-born Italian food blogger at Cooking My Dreams , who gave us an in-depth explanation about this salty Roman pasta. Montanelli says that the ingredients in pasta carbonara are extremely salty, even if a well made plate of the stuff should taste balanced: "Real guanciale is quite salty, yes, plus pecorino cheese has quite some sodium in it. But if done well, the amount of sod