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Invented designation of origin: is Italian cuisine a buffalo?
Invented designation of origin: is Italian cuisine a buffalo?

Video: Invented designation of origin: is Italian cuisine a buffalo?

Video: Invented designation of origin: is Italian cuisine a buffalo?
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I'll explain right away why this post is called that. Invented designation of origin (The lies of marketing on typical Italian products, 180 p. € 18), just released for Mondadori, is a book by Alberto Grandi, professor of business history in Parma.

And why, you ask, "is Italian cuisine a hoax?" This is Grandi's thesis, provocative and almost annoying for the rest of us Italians, full of pride for the winning model of our cuisine, based on a thousand typical products, small and large, but still authentic.

But no.

Sit down and breathe deeply before continuing. Grandi explained to Il Giorno that marketing operations would have been able to sew their myth on the products that represent our gastronomic DNA. Today we would say, their storytelling.

But what a centuries-old reputation, as Italian biodiversity, as artisans, argues Grandi, and not content with taking the side of large companies, because in his view it was industry that made Italian gastronomy great.

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Parmesan

Take Parmesan, for example. “It has a thousand years of history, but the one quoted by Boccaccio does not resemble the current product at all. It was much smaller. In Parma, moreover, it was not even of great quality.

Dried ham

And the ham? “The protected qualities are 10. The people of Modena say that it was invented by the Celts, the Parmesans by the Romans and so on. In reality, from Friuli to Sicily, as in Europe, the pork leg has always been processed, salted and left to mature.

However, in the Baedeker of the early 1900s we speak of Tuscan ham and not of Parma ham, whose fame dates back to the second half of the century. The Consortium was born in 1963, two years after that of San Daniele, but has the leadership of the market with 40%.

Pasta

"Made with Canadian wheat, the one that takes the cooking, and until 1945 it was mostly consumed in Naples, where it was produced. Senatore Cappelli is the result of crossing many varieties of different grains, in particular one that comes from Tunisia. Italian pasta has long been more African than Italian, and even today most of the grains come from abroad ".

Pizza

“A pasta disc with something on it and different names has always existed in all Mediterranean civilizations. To feel common, pizza would be Italian because we immigrated to America. If the 15 million Italians who went to America had been Greeks, I say that now the pizza tradition would have been Greek, not Italic.

Panettone

"It never really existed, it is a well thought out 1919 invention by Angelo Motta, now taken up by pastry artisans. Other than 'pan de Toni'. In 1937 Alemagna inaugurated its industrial line in a former spinning mill. Handicraft production began in the 1980s, with the decline of large-scale industry ".

Lardo di Colonnata

"It didn't exist, at least not until the 1980s. It was lard as is done everywhere. The denomination dates back to 2003, the interest in pork fat matured in the marble basins begins in the 90s. There are no explicit references to the product as we know it in historical documents ".

Modica chocolate

It was born in the early 90s from an invention of the pastry chef Franco Ruta: do not separate the cocoa butter from the seeds and work at a low temperature to leave the sugar granules intact. The Protection Consortium, on the other hand, dates back to 2003”.

Olive oil

“It has always been an industrial product. Then came the denomination. And today in Italy there are 52 PDOs and 10 new applications.

Pachino tomatoes

“A hybrid patented in 1989 in Israel. In the absence of seeds that guarantee the same characteristics continuously, the growers buy new seedlings every year in the nurseries”.

In short, reading Designation of Origin invented we come to the conclusion that Italian cuisine as we have been told was born in the seventies, built ad hoc by an industry in step with the times, aware that legends would have made its fortune.

The dishes we are fond of would have been put together with the best of things by the good Pellegrino Artusi, "without paying too much attention to their authenticity". After all, it would not have been possible to do otherwise, because, Alberto Grandi relaunches: "Up until the second post-war period we were a country of starvation".

Then came the marketing of typical products with its successful storytelling. But it is the industries that pull the sprint, the professor reiterates today on Repubblica (not online):

“Let's think of the Perugia district, which discovered a chocolate vocation when Perugina went into crisis. Italian ice cream became famous after Mottarello came out on the market. Without balsamic vinegar made with caramel, no one would know the precious one, to which they added the 'traditional' name only later."

Finally, the latest provocation:

“Spaghetti Bolognese originally did not exist, but now they are on the menu even in Bologna. They are a typical product, just like Nutella.

This is also true for you, is it true that the much loved typical Italian products are mostly the result of invented narratives? That we always need to bother the Celts to say that a cheese is good?

No, because it seems to us that the invented Designation of Origin exceeds, putting everything together in a single centrifuge, deleting even what is true in typical Italian products. Indeed, the industry rides by stealing their names, thus confirming that they are crucial and vital.

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