Politics on a plate: recipe for diplomatic success
Food brings people together and creates connection. It’s one of the oldest bonding rituals. But when the guests are world leaders, royalty, dignitaries, officials or delegations, food takes on a whole new purpose. Official dinners and banquets showcase a nation’s culture, cuisine, etiquette and values. This helps to create mutual understanding and respect, which is crucial in diplomacy. These gatherings are full of symbolic choices – and the menu is one of them. Sometimes subtly, other times deliberately, what’s on the menu could create diplomatic drama.
Politics of food diplomacy
A research team set out to show exactly how a menu flexes its political power by carefully examining hundreds of menus from diplomatic events hosted during the 20th and 21st centuries in Portugal. The findings were published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Political Science’(opens in new window). To better understand how meals signified and moulded Portuguese foreign policy and geopolitics, the researchers analysed the menus served at over 450 diplomatic dinners, state banquets and receptions between 1910 and 2023. “Those meals play a significant role as diplomatic institutions in the execution and continuity of Portuguese foreign policy,” commented first author Óscar Cabral, gastronomic sciences researcher at Spain’s Mondragon University, in a news release(opens in new window). “They demonstrate how culinary and gastronomic practices have facilitated diplomatic negotiations and provided opportunities for cultural exchange, political messaging, and the conveyance of Portuguese culture.”
When diplomacy is on the menu
He added: “Menus can be intentionally designed to convey political messages and communicate non-gastronomic aspects. For example, the COP25 meal in Madrid used dish names like ‘Warm seas. Eating imbalance’ and ‘Urgent. Minimize animal protein’ to draw attention to climate issues.” Extravagant 9- or 10-course meals that featured French cuisine were common practice over the first half of the 20th century. Portuguese products were steadily introduced during the second part of the century. A watershed moment took place during the Estado Novo – a dictatorial regime under António de Oliveira Salazar from 1950 to the early 1960s. “We see a fundamental shift towards the inclusion and promotion of Portuguese products, territory, and culinary regionalism,” explained Cabral. In this period, meals signified a developing gastronationalism – the use of food as a way to build, express or defend national identity. “This crystallized in the 1957 ‘regional lunch’ for Queen Elizabeth II, which was designed to convey a sense of territory and ‘Portugality’.” Lobster and fruit tarts were just some of dishes from the cities of Peniche and Alcobaça. More and more diplomatic meals in the 1960s and 1970s featured rare ingredients. The researchers identified and presented five distinct functions of diplomatic meals. Tactical meals are usually associated with territory or land transfers. Geopolitical meals aspire to renew and confirm alliances. Economic diplomacy meals aim to foster commercial and financial dealings between countries. Scientific, cultural and developmental cooperation meals may be hosted to demonstrate mutual interests. Cultural proximity meals can be used as a tool to bolster cultural ties with particular countries. “Our study illustrates how national cuisines can be strategically used to strengthen a country’s global standing,” concluded Cabral. Next time you’re perusing the menu at a favourite restaurant, consider that one or more of the items may have served an important function in international relations somewhere in the world.