Paper short abstract:

The question which I will try to answer in the presentation: How and why is Grandma, with the surrounding traditions, an added value in recent food marketing in Romania?

Paper long abstract:

In recent years "traditional" food products enjoyed a major success, both as part of the Slow Food movement (recently introduced to the Romanian food market) and as part of the food industry. Multinationals are trying to use this capital to tame the image of their products which press articles in recent years define as a sum of chemical ingredients (i.e. unhealthy) and tasteless. In the process of commodification, traditions have imposed some types who slowly entered the urban folklore and gastronomy. Among these figures, the grandmother - be it urban or rural version - has been imposed as an icon on a wider range of products: soups, oils, Christmas cake, cheeses. Grandma becomes a powerful metaphor of eating healthy or (at least) tasty, a good object to commodify and consume. Grandma gives cultural distinction: in several marketing scenarios she is seen as an administrator of the secrets around good taste and the management secrets of a typical product of good taste. Her recipes are reminiscent of dreamy dream.

The question which I will try to answer in the presentation: How and why is Grandma, with the surrounding traditions, an added value?