why do Italians love food so much?

Someone asked me yesterday, “why do Italians love food so much?”. Here is what I think. They love it because:

it is a matter of culture and identity…

In Italy “food” is more than just food. There are some people who say that in order to really appreciate an Italian recipe you should know everything about the region where the recipe comes from, meaning the landscape, the traditions, the way of life. If “culture” is the ensemble of the systems of meanings through which we make sense of what is around us, “food” here is one of the ways in which what is around us finds a way to express itself. In Italy, food is culture and you can find over 70.000 traditional recipes that are the perfect expression of a particular context. We could say that…

Italians love food so much because it is part of their roots, an essential companion of the beauty that surrounds them and one of the key elements that makes them… who they are.

 it is a matter of passion and pleasure…

I remember reading the results of a research once, a study that was carried out by an expert linguist. The researcher was trying to understand the difference between Americans and Italians when it comes to food. Looking at how typical Italian and American parents talk about food at dinner with their children, the scholar underlined that in the United States mothers and fathers tend to present dinner time to their kids saying things like “be a good girl/boy and you will have a reward… a wonderful dessert!” or “I know, you don’t like to eat, but be good and you’ll have some ice-cream later”. In Italy, however, parents talked about dinner with their children portraying it as a wonderful moment: “Guys, mummy cooked something delicious and special for us!” and “how delicious is dinner today, don’t you think?” were common expressions among the Italians. The conclusions of the piece, with which I perfectly agree, stated that…

 Italians think about food as something pleasurable, and therefore communicate their passion to their children. In Italy, people love food because it is definitively a matter of pleasure!

 it is a matter of simplicity and community…

Did you know that many of the Italian traditional recipes were born in the house of poor farmers who had to make the best of whatever they have in their kitchens? “You don’t waste nothing”, used to say my grandma. But because they didn’t have much, these pioneers had to keep their dishes simple. In doing so, more or less consciously, Italians have learned that the quality of the ingredients is way more important than the quantity. Cooking, for an Italian family, has always signaled the coming of the moment in which everyone can sit at the table and enjoy the simple pleasure of a warm meal. So..

For the Italians, then, food is always a reminder that life can be complicated and hard, sad and cold… but that happiness is just a matter of few, delicious ingredients.