Gastrodiplomacy

Gastrodiplomacy is a subset of public diplomacy that uses food as a means of persuading audiences about the power of cuisine to promote specific foreign policy goals. The term entered the popular vocabulary in 2002, after an article in The Economist described Global Thai, a program launched by the government of Thailand to promote its cuisine abroad by providing financial incentives for Thai nationals to open restaurants in foreign countries. Like public diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy seeks to change foreign perceptions of a country and assumes a country’s image or brand can be managed to
gain favor with foreign publics.

A subset of activities arising from gastrodiplomacy is social gastronomy, which uses food to achieve social change. Social gastronomy is citizen driven, linking entrepreneurship, food justice, and gastronomy. It started as a chef-led response to hunger and social inequality but has expanded to refer to projects that use entrepreneurship and culinary training as a means of social activism. Social gastronomy is a dynamic field, demonstrating the changing role that food plays in supporting a broad range of societal needs such as income inequality, refugee and immigrant needs, climate change, and humanitarian crises.

As an increasingly influential form of public diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy demonstrates the “soft” power of the plate to address some of the enduring challenges people face, from climate change to conflict to global migration.

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