Food & UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List

I just read this article about how Wikipedia is trying for a place on Unesco's prestigious World Heritage List. If that doesn't work out, Wikipedia might petition to make Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage List, according to the New York Times, "a lesser-known directory that includes endangered traditions and practices, like flamenco." I had never heard of the ICHL, so I looked it up (yes, on Wikipedia).

I was relieved to find a few food-related items on the list such as northern Croatian gingerbread and the Mediterranean diet. (One of the funniest things about the list is the immense range of specificity/non-specificity.) Still, as much as I love music, dance, theater and textiles, I think food deserves more of a presence on the list. What foods or food practices do you think should be declared part of the world's "intangible cultural heritage"? A specific kind of noodle-pulling? Bread-making? A type of butchery?

[If you have recommendations for World Culinary Heritage Sites, I just remembered GAF is collecting them here.]

I can think of a few...

Biryani, in all of its glorious iterations...most notably from the subcontinent - Northern Indian, Hyderabadi - but even as far away as Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.

Northern Arabian (shami) Hummus and Falafel. They have certainly left their mark on the world's food culture (for better or worse).

Doner Kabab - it was the Turks who invented the precursor to Shawerma, Gyros, and later, Al Pastor.

UNESCO: Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
The topics are quite varied including humans walls, carpet weaving, dancing, language, song, falconry, carving children's toy to name a few. I saw where Viennese coffee houses are also on the list, but I have not yet found it.

Index


The gastronomic meal of the French




Traditional Mexican cuisine - ancestral, ongoing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm



The Mediterranean diet



Gingerbread craft from Northern Croatia



Regards,