Italy’s national cuisine has just been added to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage, after a vote at the organisation’s session in New Delhi.
The inscription, titled “Italian cooking, between sustainability and biocultural diversity”, is the first time an entire national cuisine, rather than a single dish or technique, has been recognised in this way.
Italian leaders quickly presented the decision as a cultural victory. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called it a tribute to national identity, whilst Italian ministries stressed that cooking in Italy is not just about recipes, but about Sunday lunches, regional produce and the ritual of gathering at the table.
Politics on the Plate
The timing is not accidental. Italy has invested heavily in promoting its food abroad, through events such as the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, organised each year by embassies and cultural institutes.
Officials talk openly about protecting Italy’s gastronomic image and supporting a sector that involves hundreds of thousands of farms, food businesses and restaurants. UNESCO status also carries economic expectations.
Italian media and tourism analysts already predict a rise in visitors who travel specifically to eat. One estimate linked to the nomination suggested that the recognition could generate millions of additional overnight stays in the next two years.
Food, in this context, is not only nourishment or memory. It is also soft power, packaging a way of life into something that can be served, photographed and exported.
A National Badge of Honour
Supporters of the decision insist that the inscription honours daily practices as much as famous dishes. UNESCO’s summary highlights regional diversity, respect for ingredients and the social role of sharing meals, rather than listing pizza or pasta.
Italian scholars involved in the bid emphasised cooking as a social ritual passed down in families, a kind of domestic choreography that defines how people live together. At the same time, critics inside Italy worry about what this kind of recognition encourages.
Food historian Alberto Grandi has warned that global marketing has already created a simplified image of Italian cuisine organised around a handful of dishes that tourists expect to find everywhere. He argues that an international label risks freezing that image further, making it harder for lesser-known local traditions to survive.
The tension is clear. UNESCO wants to protect living practices, yet the very act of labelling can push those practices towards standardisation.
A Shared Mediterranean Table
Italian cooking does not exist in isolation.
More than a decade ago, UNESCO recognised the Mediterranean diet as a shared intangible heritage of seven countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, Morocco, Cyprus, Croatia and Portugal.
That inscription described a network of skills and rituals around olive oil, bread, wine, vegetables and communal meals across the whole basin. Seen from that angle, Italian cuisine is one regional accent in a wider language.
Couscous in Morocco, mezze in the Levant, Andalusian stews and coastal fish dishes from Tunisia to southern France express similar ideas about seasonality, frugality and generosity. Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers crossed oceans before they entered any Italian kitchen; Arab and Jewish traders helped organise the routes that carried them.
The new recognition therefore raises a quiet question for the wider region. When one country’s version of a shared culture becomes the global reference point, what happens to the others that shaped the same table over centuries?
When Heritage becomes Branding
UNESCO’s lists were created to safeguard traditions at risk, from polyphonic singing to seasonal rituals. Over time, they have also become tools in competitive branding.
Countries now campaign for inscriptions, organise public events to support bids and present success as national prestige. Italian cuisine’s new status fits that pattern.
There is nothing wrong with pride in local food. The danger appears when heritage is treated mainly as a label that can be stamped on products.
Italian producers already use geographical indications and quality marks to fight imitation. UNESCO recognition will strengthen that strategy, yet it may do less for the anonymous cooks who actually keep traditions alive in modest kitchens and small trattorie.
In North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, similar pressures exist. Restaurants adapt menus to tourist expectations, whilst street foods and home recipes risk becoming props in a performance of authenticity.
The more valuable these labels become, the more tempting it is to smooth out the rough edges that make each place distinct.
What Should be Protected?
If intangible cultural heritage is to mean more than a marketing slogan, it has to protect conditions as well as images. For Italian cooking, that might mean supporting small farmers, markets and time for family meals, not only celebrating famous chefs.
For countries around the Mediterranean, it could involve backing local grains, vegetables and techniques that struggle against fast food and delivery apps. The new inscription can be read in two ways.
It can be a trophy that confirms Italy’s culinary prestige, or an invitation to pay attention to everything that makes a shared food culture possible: labour, landscape and the slow accumulation of habits. In that second reading, Italian cooking becomes a case study in how Europe and its southern neighbours might care for their common table in an age of speed and standardisation.
Italian cuisine has been officially elevated to global cultural heritage. This recognition will either support genuine kitchens from Naples to Nador, or become another decorative label on menus designed for visitors who already know what they expect to taste.
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