Pasta different names depending upon the town and region. Common forms of pasta include long and short shapes, tubes, flat shapes or sheets, miniature shapes for soup, those meant to be filled or stuffed, and specialty or decorative shapes. As a category in Italian cuisine, both fresh and dried pastas are classically used in one of three kinds of prepared dishes: as "pasta asciutta" (or "pastasciutta"), cooked pasta is plated and served with a complementary side sauce or condiment; a second classification of pasta dishes is "pasta in brodo", in which the pasta is part of a soup-type dish. A third
Pasta (3.4 million tonnes), followed by United States (2 million tonnes) and 3 countries in the one million tonnes range: Brazil, Turkey, and Russia. The largest per capita consumers of pasta in 2015 were Italy (23.5 kg/person), Tunisia (16.0 kg/person), Venezuela (12.0 kg/person) and Greece (11.2 kg/person). Nationally, the United States is the largest consumer of pasta with 2.7 million tons consumed in 2017. In the European Union, total pasta sales in 2008 were US $8.361 billion, of which $5.722 billion was for dried pasta, $2.244 billion was for fresh or chilled pasta, and $395 million was for canned or preserved