Traditional Foods

The semantic meaning of ‘traditional food’ should be clear: a food in which broad-sense knowledge (ingredients, way of preparation, role, etc.) is transmitted from generation to generation. Although not encompassing explicit reference to the way the knowledge is transmitted, common interpretations of this definition are the following: • ‘Traditional’ knowledge is the complex of information and skills belonging to communities, as a result of the interaction with the environment in which they live and the available resources. • The transmission of ‘traditional’ knowledge generally occurs through informal means, often orally. Recent debates indicate that people have no difficulty to independently interpret tradition, in connection to food, attaching personal facets to this term, such as old-fashioned, consumed often in daily life, linked to special events, folkloric, belonging to a specific place, homemade, not elaborated, tasty, and natural. For sure, ‘traditional’ is not a technical term and does not indicate precisely defined attributes; it is rather routinely used as a broadly agreed concept, with a not surprising share of subjective interpretation. The term ‘traditional food’ encompasses a series of different, overlapping, sometimes contrasting attributes, with relation to the sociocultural and economic context. Nevertheless, reaching a so-called objective definition of traditional foods has been central in contemporary discussions, even since traditional foods recently attracted the interest of both industry and consumers, for different and, also in this case, partially contrasting reasons. These aspects will be shortly treated in this presentation