Food, Myths and Authenticity
Food, Myths and Authenticity

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims at tracing the use of myths in the process of authentication of local food and their promotion by means of food related festivals. To understand the use of food festivals as connected to local identity, this research explores how particular food items have come to signify an authentic foodstuff, and how it has come to represent the taste of a particular place, designated as its homeland. ‘Home’ is thus interpreted as an imagined place, a place that surfaces by means of discourses made up of geographical indications that imply a process of meaning and myth-making. I am exploring in a critical manner festivals related to food and drinks, in their Bulgarian context. I am questioning the very process of valuation of food and food technologies as genuine for a certain region. Another question that the research intends to answer is how authenticity is powered by mythologized allegations of origin, justifying the connection food-place-traditions.

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