A new book on food and politics

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/proteins-pathologies-and-politics-9781350056893/

This is the link to the book

Proteins, Pathologies and Politics

Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century 

 

I've contributed by writing a chapter on how Fascism and Nazism constructed a sort of 'sacred vegetarianism' in order to support and communicate their ideologies.  

The book is published by Bloomsbury and analyses how the combination of food, medicine and dietary guidelines have shaped political perspectives and communication since the Nineteenth century. 

The editors are David Gentilcore (University of Leicester, UK) and Matthew Smith (University of Strathclyde, UK).

New Questions for Local Food Companies

In another post of this blog, I wrote about the critiques surrounding the zero-miles food theory. To sum up, the problem is that today people travel around the world and live big parts of their lives far from their birthplaces much more than in the past. All of this has caused displacement, and food from birthplaces is the easiest and best way of curing distress. That's why Italian people living in London don't buy zero-miles English food, but lots-of-miles pasta and Parmigiano. And the same happens to the Indians living in Europe, the Egyptians in the US, and so on. 

In addition, much research has demonstrated that sometimes importing food from other countries is less polluting than growing food at home. Finally, many local companies are selling their products on the internet globally, sending local foods to other countries and thus contradicting the basic rule of the theory. Interestingly, those who buy this local food are both people suffering with food nostalgia and people who have nothing to do with the geographic origins of that food. As a result, the idea of eating food coming from the same area where one lives is still fascinating in theory, but is becoming less feasible in practice.

If we assume that the zero food miles theory is in difficulty, we must also assume that the companies producing and selling local food have a problem. In fact, these companies have often based their communication on the fact that they are a zero food miles company. Now that the theory is less fascinating, new questions arise. Why do people buy local food? How should local food companies promote their products?

The problem is already here, and some of these companies are looking for new strategies. Interestingly, Italian national channels are broadcasting the commercial of mozzarella Francia, a local brand which is very popular in the area surrounding Rome. This brand has often promoted its products by underlining its local production process. The new commercial, instead, ignores the local character of the brand, which is now available in many Italian regions and is in fact promoted on national channels. The commercial focuses on the fact that this mozzarella doesn't contain citric acid and other ingredients extraneous to mozzarella's traditional recipe, only containing milk, salt and rennet. Thus, the commercial seems to say: “Wherever you live and were born, buy it because it's local, and thus it's good”

I strongly believe that local food will be increasingly successful in the near future. However, what I also believe is that the people who will buy it will live far from the region where that food has been produced. They will buy it either for nostalgia or because they simply like it., because it's better than the global counterpart By contrast, local foods will decreasingly be bought as it is produced close to home. In short, the famous lardo di Colonnata will be more successful out of than in Colonnata.

Hands off Suspended Coffee!

Il caffè sospeso was an Italian philanthropic practice which was really popular in the first part of the twentieth century, especially in Naples. The practice was really simple and consisted of buying one-more coffee than the coffees people actually needed. A lone person used to ask for two coffees, a couple for three, etc., telling the barista that one coffee was sospeso, suspended. The suspended coffee was momentarily not served, but saved for a poor person who would enter the bar soon. Obviously, il caffè sospeso was really popular with the Neapolitan homeless people, who used to enter the bars asking if, by chance, there was a caffè sospeso.

In Italy, this practice is still present, but has gradually declined in popularity. However, when it was supposed that we would never buy one-more coffee for the rest of our lives, suddenly suspended coffee became popular again. Not in Italy (at least at first), and not at the old bars and cafes, but thanks to charities and big cafe chains. In many famous cafes belonging to these chains, in fact, you can buy one-more coffee. Your name will be written on a blackboard that all the customers will see and the money you have given for one-more coffee will be passed onto a charity, which will use it to buy a coffee for a needy person.

It's quite easy to understand that the name is the same, but what today is called suspended coffee is something very different from il caffè sospeso. In one word, what has become lost is spontaneity. While in the past the bar mediated between the donor and the receiver, now the company encourages giving in a commercial context. On many Facebook pages, the company praises the donors, to persuade other people to do the same. Thus, the company uses this practice to attract new customers, to whom it promises praises. Thus, today suspended coffee is only a commercial strategy.

Moreover, spontaneity is also lost from the point of view of the receiver. In fact while in the past the needy person required to play an active role, deciding to enter the bar and ask for a suspended coffee, today it is the charity (or the company) that decides who is the lucky person. Other times, even more different from the original, one suspended coffee is activated automatically, each time a coffee is sold. Again, it is only a strategy to sell more.

What to say? Certainly giving and receiving has changed over the last thirty or forty years, and today the old mechanism of il caffè sospeso would be considered paternalistic. In fact, today the sharing economy offers us more adequate ways of giving. Moreover, many people might consider upsetting to see a homeless person into the bar. But what to do with the old practices? I would like that old habits such as il caffè sospeso disappear, becoming material for historians. Seeing their name exploited, and them turned into a further mechanism to make money, instead, is quite upsetting.