Culinary tourism and contradictions of cultural sustainability: industrial agriculture food products as tradition in the American Midwest

Abstract

ABSTRACT A culinary tourism project in the eastern Midwest of the United States illustrates contradictions between the cultural and ecological pillars of sustainability. Foods traditional to this area reflect industrial agricultural methods and technologies now recognized as threatening to the natural environment. Highlighting those foods through culinary tourism, then, celebrates forms and practices representing a food culture that is actively incompatible with the ecological, economic, and social pillars of sustainability. This article describes how folkloristic perspectives on culinary tourism were applied to first validate that food culture; then make it competitive as a tourism attraction. Those perspectives were also used to address conflicts with environmental sustainability posed by supporting cultural sustainability. This model of culinary tourism offers frameworks to recognize the complexity and dynamic nature of both food and tourism, suggesting strategies for resolutions consistent with a food cultures’ history, ethos, and aesthetic. That consistency is fundamental to the endurance of a sense of connection felt by community members and to the sustainability of that food culture.