Newest Details About the Mysterious Pile of 500 Pounds of Cooked Pasta Dumped in Woods

A New Jersey town is steeped in mystery as 500 pounds of cooked pasta was inexplicably dumped in a wooded area. Heaps of noodles lined a creek bed in Old Bridge Township, and nobody knows where it came from. The mess has since been cleaned up, but social media is buzzing about the puzzling sauceless noodles conundrum. 

Nina Jochnowitz, a community leader and advocate, posted images of the bizarre situation on Facebook and estimated there to be hundreds of pounds of pasta tossed alongside the creek. She wrote, "A good estimate is more than 500 pounds of pasta dumped adjacent to the streams intersecting with Hilliard and Mimi."

There are no further details regarding how or why the pasta was dumped. However, Jochnowitz stated in her Facebook post that she wasn't shocked by the waste.

"No surprise when we see the dumping of construction and other garbage spewed in all of the neighborhoods. This week, there was a new type of dumping of excessive food, PASTA."

Someone posted the photos on Reddit unbeknownst to Jochnowitz, who didn't know the news spread beyond her community, and there was a debate on whether the pasta was cooked. "Is this cooked pasta?" one user asked. "Someone went through the trouble of boiling all this pasta and just…dumping it?" A commenter replied, "I feel like the rain made it looked cooked but if it was cooked we really need some answers like what type of seasoning they used."

But the pasta was indeed cooked, according to Jochnowitz. She told The Philadelphia Inquirer, "It looked like someone filled up a wheelbarrow of pasta and dumped it."

While nobody wants to see a mountain of food wasted or littering the streets, there are other reasons to be concerned. It can actually pose a serious risk. Jochnowitz told the outlet, "You might say, 'Who cares about pasta?' But pasta has a PH level that will impact the water stream," Jochnowitz said.

"That water stream is important to clean up because it feeds into the town's water supply … It was one of the fastest cleanups I've ever seen here"

The strangeness of seeing oodles of noodles tossed in the woods is laughable because it's so mystifying, but it's no joke. "When it rains here, it smells like sewage," Jochnowitz, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The advocate leads local cleanups, including one that disregarded more than 300 tires from a lake. We got the county to take away about half. But a pile is still there that the township has done nothing to take away."

Once the photos circulated online, the jokes rolled in. One Redditor wrote, "We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary." Another added, "MY DAD WORKS FOR A PASTA FACTORY IN NJ! That pasta is probably the 20lbs. I requested for the food bank for the second year in a row but he dumped all 20 years worth away all at once so I couldn't have it.," to which someone responded, "I laughed so hard at this, thank you for such a ridiculously silly dad joke."

A user wrote, "The police won't stop until the perpetrator is aldente-fied."  Another added, "Sounds like the work of Rig-a-Tony!" Someone else joked, "He was actually framed…orzo I'm told."