Roll out McItaly: the ciao burger

If anything confirms how far politics is distorting food, the continuing foofaraw about the McItaly does. luca Zaia, Italy’s agriculture minister did a dead with McDonalds to produce an all Italian burger –  made entirely of Italian DOP products (Protected Designation of Origin) , artichoke spread and Asiago cheese or onion, lettuce and smoked pancetta, and make up the colours of the Italian flag – red, white and green.

Sounds delicious.

But not if you’re a lefty. Leave it to Carlo  Petrini, founder of the Slow Food Movement and arch enemy of McDonalds…”Globalising a taste does not promote it but rather standardises and homogenises it,” he said in an open letter in an Italian newspaper.

Makes no sense to me.  Making people aware of different tastes raises their palate-consciousness. I don’t see French champagne suffering from the world wide popularity of other countries’  fizz. They just make you realize how much better the real thing is.

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About Gina Mallet

Gina Mallet is the author of Last Chance to Eat, The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World, which won the 2005 James Beard Award for writing on food, an account of the lost world of eating. She is a former theatre critic, and now the restaurant critic for the National Post of Canada.
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