(AGI) Rome, March 12 - Spaghetti with tomato sauce has beenchosen as typical Italian dish to represent the upcoming Expoin Milan. "Spaghetti with tomato sauce, the most simple recipe,beautiful and good, like me." For Joe Bastianich, the chef whobecame famous as judge at Masterchef, the dish of the Expo isthe most classic of the Italian cuisine. He has chosen it torepresent the event in Milan. Spaghetti has become a globaldish, which is also very successful in the U.S., where 8 out of10 Americans eat pasta once a week and for 40 percent of themspaghetti is unrivalled. For St. Patrick's Day there are evenrecipes for green spaghetti available on the web, likespaghetti with avocado on Foodsta.com, one of the most popularblogs in the States. But Italians also prefer spaghetti withtomato sauce. Italians are even world leaders, eating 26 kg percapita of the world's favourite dish. According to aDoxa/AIDEPI survey, 67 percent of Italians prefer spaghetti toany other type of pasta, beating short pasta by a whisker (64percent favour fusilli, penne or rigatoni). Lasagne, farfalle,tagliatelle and cannelloni stay far behind with 28 to 35percent preferring these types of pasta. The simple tomatosauce is preferred by 28 percent of Italians, while 26 percentlike meat sauce and seafood, carbonara and pesto sauce scoremuch lower percentages. "We agree with the choice ofBastianich," said Riccardo Felicetti, Chairman of the AIDEPIPasta Group. "We will support spaghetti in tomato sauce as thedish that symbolises the EXPO, because it fits perfectly in ahealthy and balanced diet based on complex carbohydrates, thewinning choice in terms of taste and health. Spaghetti withtomato sauce is probably the recipe that symbolises Italiancuisine worldwide." Also on the web spaghetti "beats" allcompeting pastas: with 122 million hits in Google search, onlypenne can keep up (20 million hits), while all other formats(from rigatoni to tagliatelle, fettuccine with tonnarelli, andfusilli) together reach just 18 million hits. AGI . . .