Why a carbonara sauce in European Parliament has stirred Italian outrage

In Italy, food is a serious matter.

The dish from the Italian capital of Rome, famed all around the world, is as identifiable with Italy as pasta and pizza.

Little wonder then that the country is in an uproar over ‘fake’ carbonara sauce. This after Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida has called for an investigation into ‘Italian-sounding’ products including pasta sauce on the shelves of the European Parliament’s supermarket in Brussels.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has also written to the European Parliament president to demand an investigation.

But what happened? What do we know?

Let’s take a closer look:

The pride of Italy

First, let’s take a brief look at Carbonara. The dish comprises Italian pasta, pork, cheese, egg yolks and black pepper. The origins of the dish have been lost to history. However, there are a few leading theories.

The first is that the name comes from carbonaro (coal burners) and that it was made by those who work outside. Another theory is that American GIs, who were on limited rations during the Second World War, concocted the dish. Others claim it comes from the Carbonari or the Italian revolutionaries. Whatever the story, the dish is closely associated with Italy. Which explains why Italians like Lollobrigida are so touchy about it.

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Lollobrigida, who belongs to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, said he stumbled across jars of creamy ‘Italian-sounding’ pasta sauce being sold at the European Parliament’s supermarket in Brussels.

He reserved much of his ire for a carbonara sauce that said it was made from “Italiaanse pancetta” as well as a tomato sauce comprising onions from Calabria.

“Ignoring the pancetta in carbonara … all these products represent the worst of Italian-sounding products,” Lollobrigida vented on Facebook. “It is unacceptable to see them on the shelves of the European Parliament supermarket. I have asked for an immediate investigation.” Lollobrigida has claimed that the products even bear the Italian flag.

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While the product made by Delhaize, a Belgian firm, does not lay claim to the sauce being Italian, it does use smoked pancetta rather than pork jowl. This, food enthusiasts and critics say, is akin to committing a culinary sin.

This gains even more significance given the fact that Italy is currently attempting to have its cuisine recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity product. The body is expected to render a decision in this case in December.

Lollobrigida has claimed that “Italian-sounding” foods are watering down one of the most important aspects of Italian culture.

“Our cuisine is simple, but not easy,” Lollobrigida was quoted as saying by CNN at the Summer Fancy Food Festival in New York in July. “The sea and the land give us what we need, and thanks to our processors we can count on exceptional product quality.”
‘May be prosecutable’

The Brothers of Italy party’s delegation in Parliament earlier this week had vowed to submit a letter to President Roberta Metsola.
“The improper use of symbols or references to Italianness on products that do not come from Italy may constitute a deceptive practice and therefore be prosecutable,” Brothers of Italy head of delegation Carlo Fidanza told Euronews.

Under European law, a food product can be categorised as misleading consumers if its labelling is deemed to falsely depict its country of origin. Europe’s Parliament has said that the product has now been removed from the shelves of its supermarket.
Coldiretti, Italy’s biggest agribusiness association, has claimed that the “scandal of fake Italian products” costs the country €120 billion per year.

“Paradoxically, the biggest counterfeiters of Italian excellence are industrialised countries,” Coldiretti told The Guardian. “Due to the so-called ‘Italian-sounding’ phenomenon, more than two out of three Italian agrifood products worldwide are fake, with no production or employment link to our country.”

Carbonara brought to boil

This isn’t the first time a stir has been caused in Italy over its cuisine. Last year, Heinz introduced a canned version of “spaghetti carbonara” – again using pancetta rather than guanciale – which resulted in Michelin-starred chef Alessandro Pipero likening it to “cat food”.

In 2023, food expert Alberto Grandi caused a row in Italy after claiming Carbonara is actually an American dish.

Grandi, a food historian at the University of Parma, wrote in La Repubblica that the “value and history” of Italian cuisine were surrounded by “misunderstandings”. Grandi, in an article in the Financial Times entitled Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong, said the dish actually came from Americans who were in Italy after the Second World War.

“Italian cuisine really is more American than it is Italian,” Grandi claimed. “Maybe once a year we ate amatriciana [a tomato-based recipe with bacon], when we could afford to kill a pig. But I’d never heard of Carbonara before the war,” he added. “The first recipe that was publicised is from 1953 in Chicago. Many Italians went to America, so practically all the cooking — all the Italian kitchen — is Italo-American,” Grandi was quoted as saying by Euronews.

“Many Italian classics from panettone to tiramisù are relatively recent inventions,” he further added. “For my father in the 1970s, pizza was just as exotic as sushi is for us today,” he told the newspaper.

With inputs from agencies