"UNESCO" news and stories

Let's do lunch. But hurry if you were thinking of France. The classic, leisurely and well-endowed Gallic meal is going the way of another kind of lunch, the one preceded by three martinis (on life-support anyway since "Mad Men" ended for the season). UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), which is based in (surprise!) Paris, has just declared traditional French food an "intangible cultural heritage," along with 46 other "winners" such as the unforgettable carpet weaving of Ajerbaijan, the haunting Peruvian scissors dance, and everybody's real favorite, Mexican cuisine (who knew tacos could hold their own with tournedos?). This is not a joke. The French, the greatest consumers of McDonald's outside the U.S., are busy trying to make a buck; they don't have time to tarry over terrines of foie gras with Twitter and Facebook on the side. Tastes have changed, too. Writing in Gourmet, noted Le Figaro critic François Simon said: "Parisians, especially the young, aren't that interested in long, fussy meals anymore. They aren't even demanding good food. They crave a scene." Simon adds a warning not to look to the French housewife for salvation, since "madame has gone off to work." Books have even been written on the subject (Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the Death of France, by Michael Steinberger).

There is only one thing that can save French food now. You. Get your butt on a plane as fast as you can and start eating your way through the best bistros in Paris. Once the food goes, there will be nothing left of the Fifth Republic except perfume, high-speed trains and just-released DVDs of old Jerry Lewis movies.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization does a lot of things, including set international standards, disseminate new ideas, and "help build human and industrial capacities in diverse fields." One of the organization's most important functions, in my opinion, is to set and protect cultural heritages, which are determined by the World Heritage Committee.

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has a wide range of criteria they use to determine world heritages, and France wants to add its cuisine to that list. According to AFP, though, not many people think this bid is going to go through, especially after the committee rejected a similar bid from Mexico a few years ago.

Sure, most of the World Heritages are physical places or arts and traditions associated with them. Most of the criteria that World Heritage Committee uses have to do with monuments or geological locations, but criteria number three leaves cuisine open, at least in my mind: to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

If national cuisine doesn't bear unique testimony to cultural tradition, I don't know what does. What do you think?

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