On arrival, we dropped into the local supermarket to stock up on food since we are staying in a self catering apartment. Wandering through the supermarket while looking in amazement at the wide selection available in such a tiny space, I came across the pasta aisle. I had to stop.

We are not talking about how many brands here. I am talking about the number of shapes available under a single brand Barilla. The shelves were stocked with blue boxes, each containing a different shape of pasta, each with it's own number. For instance spaghetti is number 5.

I tried to find out many types of pasta does Barilla currently makes and to my horror, Google doesn't have the answer. The closest I came to was a poster designed in the 50s with the various types of pasta and their numbers accordingly. Interestingly, the pasta featured on this poster only have odd numbers. Also number 53 which I saw on the shelves here is not on this poster.

So I guess the question is how many types of pasta does Barilla now manufactures?