A country’s culinary tradition is one of the constituent elements of the concept of nation. It reflects and affirms its culture and thus its difference, its geography, its history. Eating testifies to where one comes from. Eating creates society. Eating is a pleasure. Eating excites the senses and desire. Eating is orgasmic.
“In the beginning was the word,” Saint John tells us, testifying that the idea is preeminent over action. No, “in the beginning was hunger.” The child learns that he must eat before having any idea of finiteness, a concept that will come to him/her when he/she falls from the nest. It is the mad hope that will console him/her for being so, and he/she will have to eat and drink to survive. Doing this well and with pleasure is learning to live.
In a world threatened either by globalization and its egalitarian leveling of the cultures, where diversity risks erasing all differences, or, on the contrary, by an exclusive and belligerent retreat into identity and nationalism, the challenge of “food design” becomes preeminent. How can we preserve and affirm the tradition of a country, a society, and thus guarantee the concept of diversity, which requires that each culinary culture enriches one another, resonates with one another, and does not exclude one another?
Food-related ecosystems, from production to consumption, considering all the inherent services, are subject to radical transitions: new customers, new needs, new ecological and protein constraints, new sociological contexts, at a time when food is becoming the primary medicine and ensuring the health, safety, and longevity of an entire population. How can we manage all these constraints without compromising what makes a nation rich: its relationship with food and the rituals associated with it, its culture, in short, the culture that remains when everything else has been forgotten?
Christian Guellerin