Introduction
Food is one of the most essential and tangible elements of human life as well as a revealing index of social and cultural boundaries. As David Sutton (2001: 3) perceptively notes, food itself “hides powerful meanings and structures under the cloak of the mundane and the quotidian.” Food authenticity, meaning the “real,” “genuine,” or “original,” stands for an aptly, if not identically, reproduced regional or ethnic food culture and the larger world of sensory experience that the consumption of that food evokes. Authenticity claims linking food to place – what the French term terroir, or what Trubek (2009) calls “the taste of place” – rest on assumptions that geographic conditions contribute to food’s inherent characteristics and qualities. In global markets, food is increasingly valued for its authenticity, that is, its links to specific people, places, and times.
Authenticity is produced from cultural values and commercial practices that create economic value (Cavanaugh ...