Alberto Grandi

Alberto Grandi (born 1967) is an Italian Marxist academic and professor of Economics and Management at the University of Parma.

Career In 1998, Grandi obtained a post-doctoral fellowship in Economic History at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Parma, wherefrom, in 1999, he was awarded a four-year research grant in the field of Economic History. In 2001, he was named Researcher in Economic History at the same university. On the notion of typicality, he examined how food products are characterized and sought by the consuming public on the basis of what are considered to be their "intrinsic characteristics", such as quality, taste, smell, and so on, and also their "symbolic properties", such as their name, the tradition and the history accompanying the product, etc. Further, he examined the relationship between "original" typical products and their imitations, using as a main example, the history of "one of the most copied" food products, the Modena balsamico. In his work on the general notion of the invention of tradition he is stated he follows the precedent of British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm.

In 2018, he published and started a podcast titled "DOI", the Italian initials of the book's title, in which he presented his claims about the origin of pizza, of which, he stated most Italians first heard in the 1950s, about carbonara being a strictly American recipe, and so on. The podcast lasted three seasons and scored more than one million downloads.

In 2024, Grandi and Daniele Soffiati published , which makes the claim that modern Italian cuisine is a recent invention and is heavily influenced by emigration and the reintroduction of international Italian-style cooking, stating that, "I may be seen as the enemy here in Italy, but this country has done well to create an image of its food and wine which did not exist as recently as 50 years ago." UNSECO is expected to produce a decision on the proposal by 2025.

The Financial Times interview exposed a large audience, Italian and domestic, to Grandi's controversial views. His remarks were met with a significant amount of criticism and protests by Italian chefs, food critics, historians, politicians, the Italian media, as well as food professionals. In a March 27 interview by la Repubblica, Grandi stated in response:

Italian cuisine is assuming an identity dimension beyond all reason. Pavlovian reactions that make no sense are now taking place. I don't understand why many people attack me since I don't question the quality of Italian food or products; I reconstruct the history of these dishes in a historical and philologically correct manner. And with my studies I have shown that many preparations derive from the last 50–60 years of Italian history and from interactions with the Atlantic culture. The first recipe for carbonara is dated in 1953 Chicago. Carbonara did not exist in Italy before; it's Italian-American. The sauce on the pizza was born in New York and not in Naples, where it appears later.