Gastrodiplomacy
The Mediterranean dietary model and Italian cuisine, replicated in other countries around the world.
A section dedicated to Italian institutions, schools and businesses abroad
Italian cuisine is loved all over the world, and the Mediterranean diet is the most studied dietary model for prevention. Two pieces of heritage recognised by UNESCO, the Mediterranean Diet in 2010 and Italian Cuisine in 2025, which outside Italy travel as a repertoire of recipes, much less as a way of eating.
Gastrodiplomacy is the use of a country's cuisine to make itself known and appreciated beyond its borders: Thailand, Korea, Japan and Peru have done it for years with dedicated public programmes, and France for two centuries.
Our work is to export the complete combination, the Mediterranean dietary model together with Italian cuisine, replicating and adapting it outside the Mediterranean area.
Where Italian products meet local food
Not all Italian products can be exported, and not everything makes sense to export. The part of our heritage that keeps, extra virgin olive oil, durum wheat, legumes, tomatoes, long-aged cheeses, is the heart of the model and travels well. The fresh part necessarily stays local, and seasonality is itself part of the Mediterranean model.
The work lies in bringing them together: the Italian product used every day within the local cuisine, and not once a year as a gift.
This is the principle of the Planeterranean diet, proposed by the UNESCO Chair in Health Education and Sustainable Development at the University of Naples Federico II: extending the benefits of the Mediterranean model around the world while also making the most of what each region already has.
Because the Mediterranean diet is not a list of dishes and recipes: it is a model and a lifestyle, and it has a technical side that lives in the kitchen. Cooking methods, preparations that preserve micronutrients and phytochemicals, the way vegetables, legumes and fish are handled so that they reach the plate with what they contain. It is the part that cannot be exported in a bottle: it is taught.
And this is how a product becomes a habit: a gesture that is repeated becomes a habit, and the habit becomes health.
Prevention, sustainability, lifestyle
The Mediterranean diet is an internationally recognised model of health, and Italian products are its ingredients. Bringing the model means giving those products the reason why they are worth choosing and the way to use them every day: prevention of chronic diseases, sustainability of supply chains and seasonality, a lifestyle that can be learnt.
This work sits alongside the promotion of Italian agri-food products and strengthens it: to quality and origin, which are already its language, it adds health content. Italian evenings, tastings, trade missions, courses and school programmes work better when, next to the tasting, there is the why, and when those who taste know how to use that product on a Monday evening, at home.
The words, to be clear
- Cultural diplomacy
- the whole culture of a country, language, art, music, used to make itself known
- Culinary diplomacy
- food in official relations: state dinners, the negotiating table. From government to government
- Gastrodiplomacy
- cuisine addressed to the citizens of another country. From a country to a people: this is the one
- Food diplomacy
- food as aid: cooperation and food security
Who proposes it
I worked for years in international hospitality, in Food & Beverage management roles in Muscat, Istanbul and Almaty, and I come from a family of restaurateurs going back three generations: I know from the inside what it takes to make an Italian kitchen work in a country that is not its own. On top of this come my studies in nutrition and university teaching in English.
Who it is for
- Embassies, consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes
- Italian Chambers of Commerce Abroad and offices of the ITA (Italian Trade Agency)
- Italian schools abroad, hospitality schools and cookery schools
- Italian restaurants and restaurant groups outside Italy
- Italian food companies that export
- Italian associations and communities abroad
This service is in development. For collaborations, projects and teaching, get in touch.
Request Consultation