Italy to go on pasta strike

Consumers' associations in Italy have asked people to refrain from buying or eating pasta for the day, in protest against recent price increases. The groups are requesting the government intervene to reduce pasta prices.

An increase in the price of wheat in recent months has forced pasta manufacturers to pass on the cost. Pasta is a national dish in Italy, with each Italian eating on average 28 kg (62 lb) of pasta every year.

The leader of one consumer association, Elio Lannutti, said the objective of the pasta strike was to forgo pasta for one day, in order to have more of it in the days to come.

Italian supermarkets may mark up pasta prices by 20% by the end of this year. Global warming and the growing use of durum wheat as a bio-fuel are blamed for the steep rise in pasta prices. The price for durum flour, the main ingredient for Italian pasta, has risen from 0.26 euro per kg (£0.18) to 0.45 euro per kg in the last two months.

Spain Wants World-Heritage Status for its Food

Do tapas and gazpacho need UNESCO recognition? Spain thinks so -- and is campaigning for "Mediterranean cuisine" to be added to the list.

The UNESCO world heritage list for Spain includes the Roman aqueduct in Segovia and, of course, the Alhambra. Now the Spanish government wants to add "Mediterranean cuisine" -- a recommendation that raised a few smiles in Brussels on Monday.

It's not a completely absurd idea: Elena Espinosa, Spain's Minister of Agriculture and Fishing, suggested at an EU meeting on Monday that Mediterranean food should be added to UNESCO's list of "intangible" world-heritage contributions, which would lift the international profile of paella and gazpacho to the level of pygmy dances in Africa or death rituals in Mexico.

But the suggestion did cause a minor rift between southern and northern EU delegates. Germany's agricultural minister, Horst Seehofer -- a known fan of Schweinshaxe, or Bavarian pig's knuckle -- reportedly couldn't restrain a smirk. But his Portuguese colleague, Jaime Silva, whose government assumed the EU presidency from Berlin on July 1, called Spain's suggestion a "good idea."

Rieks Smeets, head of the Intangible Heritage Section at UNESCO, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that his office has so far not listed any diets or cuisines. He also hadn't seen the Spanish proposal. He said Madrid may be trying to drum up international support in Brussels before making a formal pitch to UNESCO. Spain's written bid calls the Mediterranean diet "rich, varied, balanced, healthy and delicious." It wants to promote the cuisine as a contribution to world nutrition, and it bucks up its case with evidence from a US researcher, Ancel Keys, who published a study in the 1950s making the now-conventional claim that a diet rich in olive oil, fruit, vegetables and fruit -- plus measured doses of wine -- could lower the risk of heart disease. Keys died in 2004, at the age of 100.

Smeets didn't think the Spanish idea was so strange. "Some states do have culinary traditions, especially traditions that are linked to rituals," so he expected more such proposals to cross his desk.

Der Spiegel