“Tourism should be an engine for the enhancement of regional gastronomy, but it is reinforcing homogenised and less healthy eating patterns, putting the gastronomic identity and food safety of the regions at risk,” warned European Climate Pact ambassador Amélia Delgado, who coordinated the study.
The study ‘Food and Tourism Nexus, Challenges and Opportunities’ indicated that rising food prices, especially in times of high tourist influx, have led to the replacement of local and seasonal products with standardised alternatives in line with visitors’ habits.
According to the ambassadors of the European Climate Pact, Portugal’s food identity could be at risk, “if urgent measures are not implemented”.
The European Climate Pact called on the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) to “take a central role in promoting policies that successfully integrate food sustainability into municipal planning”.
“The ANMP has a responsibility to mobilise municipalities to protect food culture and ensure the enhancement of regional produce.”
According to the researcher specialising in food science, tourism can and should be an ally of sustainable traditional gastronomy.
However, “without a clear strategy, it will continue to accelerate the substitution of local products, which make the most of our natural heritage”.
Local products are being replaced by ultra-processed products, which are “detrimental to public health and to resilience in the face of disruptions in supply chains, while also hampering strategies for adapting to climate change”.
According to Amélia Delgado, many tourists are looking for a globalised diet, based on industrial or exotic products that are neither adapted to the local climate nor to a balanced diet, relegating traditional gastronomy to second place.
“As a result, large companies in the food sector, especially those that produce ultra-processed foods, have come to dominate the market, supplying frozen and pre-prepared products even to traditional catering, where it is believed that they will continue to satisfy the customer while reducing costs,” she said.
The researcher also explained that the Mediterranean Diet is often associated with poverty, “when in fact it represents a balanced diet, where meat and fish complement the dishes rather than being the protagonists”.
“It’s an almost vegetarian food culture, where seasonality and the absence of waste predominate,” she emphasised, also recalling that in the past the products sold by small producers were more nutritious, “but today they face increasing difficulties in competing with the multinationals that supply unsustainable, unhealthy but cheap food products.”
Price, she said, cannot be the main determinant when buying food.
“Food is a basic right and current food systems have high costs, for health systems, for local economies and for the planet, which is our home,” she concluded.
The study ‘Food and Tourism Nexus, Challenges and Opportunities’ is part of the ‘Global Nutrition Dialogues Synthesis Report’, a project by the NGO 4SD, presented in March in Paris.
In addition to Amélia Delgado, the European Climate Pact ambassadors Luísa Barateiro, Rosmel Rodriguez and Anna Staszewska took part in the research and writing, based on inquiries to various experts, including a doctor specialising in obesity, an olive oil producer, a chef, researchers in urban planning and tourism and an economist.
