Die Erfindung von „Pizza & Pasta“

Italienisches Essen und italienische Einwanderung in den USA im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

Abstract

Dishes euphemistically called ‘Italian’ nourish the global community of millions of people relying on industrial foods today. Contrary to their marketing success, the products labelled as such are not homemade, but instead they are cheap commodities produced in factories. Due to a collective false memory operation called ‘marketing’ we learned to conceive ‘pizza & pasta’ as being Italian. A historical examination proves that the attribution ‘Italian’ is incorrect. ‘Pizza & pasta’ are not a fusion of Italian culinary traditions overseas but an invention introduced into global food markets by US-American companies like the transnational ConAgra-company. The main reasons behind this campaign were their comparably cheap production costs and easy distributing and retailing properties. ‘Pizza & pasta’ are forerunners of a global cuisine intentionally structured by global markets. Austrian philosopher and sociologist Rolf Schwendter called the phenomenon pointedly Weltmarktstrukturküche (‘world market structured cuisine’). This article parts from global food history in order to decipher the connections and disconnects of immigration patterns related to ‘pizza & pasta’.