The authors base their research on observations and in the literature concerning different forms of mobility of human beings and food products, distances and territorial anchoring. They continue by addressing the paradoxes in acculturation processes that occur during identity (re)construction in food consumption and eating habits. They focus on the role of cross-border migration, in the spreading of genuine country-specific products and/or local food specialties of migrant populations in their host countries. What are the different definitions of the distance/s between the migrant and his home country and   the host culture? What role does the migrant play in the spreading of these eating habits? How does the acculturation process work? What different forms of territorial anchoring account the spreading of these genuine country-specific foods?

Mobility is defined traditionally as the movement of human beings in space, taking into consideration neither the scale (local, regional or international) nor the temporal feature of the displacement (day, week, month, year). Mobility is a powerful factor of social and territorial reconfiguration [1]. Geographical mobility is not the simple movement of humans from one place to another but also links places and/or the construct of different cultures.

So how can the notion of mobility be linked to that of local anchoring, a notion that is generally defined as the link between know-how or handicraft skill and a particular spatially limited locality? We consider that the relationship between mobility and local anchoring is relevant as we assume that the latter can also be defined as the relation of the individual to a particular place in terms of his social organization, life experience or memory.

An individual carries with him his memories of the tastes, smells and skills of his life experience. When he travels, he passes them on to people in other places. A mutual but paradoxical acculturation process stems from contact between the individual and other culture. The newcomer brings his/her home culture and attachment to the homeland before contributing the products of the place in question. His identity and wholeness depend on what he remembers. Memory does not consist only of customs and habits, beliefs and social/cultural values but also includes skills, technical and social knowledge and images reflecting the products and objects that link the individual to his “country”. This is where he was born, where the wheat is denser, where water has a different taste, meat tastes of the meadows and vegetables have better flavor. He is, in fact, anchored to his place of birth both materially through products and objects and morally by his home culture and his knowledge of place.

Faced with the culture of the host society, and (re)constructing his own identity, the migrant has a natural reflex to keep his original identity. For this, he spontaneously uses his know-how and skills to make objects, tools and kitchen utensils and dishes, thus offering part of his home culture to the people of the host society. There will be mutual exchange unless members of the host society feel threatened by this offer. While the newcomer absorbs the culture of his host society, he enriches the latter, now dominant, by disseminating certain elements of his home culture, of his homeland. Local anchoring cannot subsequently be considered solely as an organic link between human being, product and a place but also as a social and mental relation that the migrant establishes with his place of birth, his homeland. Physical distances will thus be blurred by mental and social closeness, by the cultural islands created by the migrant and people from the same place, in order to maintain own traditions. Eating is part of this process.

However, these social, cultural and physical changes in the migrant and his food are accompanied by a number of paradoxes that are interesting to analyze. How do cultural exchanges occur and in what way do they affect food preparation and the eating habits of both migrants and natives of the host country? How does food change through these exchanges and the necessary changes? Does the movement of human beings and of foodstuffs change the identity of those who eat and what they eat?

In the first part of our article that sets out the conceptual framework, we introduce the French school of social sciences and humanities on food, define the mobility of the individual in time and space and then address the notion of “distance” in both physical and social terms. After (re)defining local anchoring and analyzing the paradoxes arising from the mobility of the individual and distances in the second part, we highlight the links between human beings and their food identity and social representations, illustrated by examples, and discuss the paradoxes arising from the alteration of these food representations in the third part before concluding.

Conceptual Framework: Migration and Distances

The methodology of this exploratory work is based on the discussion of the concepts derived from the French school of social sciences and humanities on food and nutrition. The figure below (Figure 1) shows how the different concepts have been developed since the 1960s by various researchers in France.

Figure 1: Diachronic Approach of the French School of Social Sciences and Humanities on Food and Nutrition (1960-2010)

During the period studied (1960-2010), research work on agri-food systems changed somewhat to include new questions concerning the diversity of production systems and their dynamics. Meanwhile, questions that developed around food and its linkages to culture conserved their importance throughout the period, with special emphasis on the role of the social construct of eating and the place of geography in food consumption patterns. A marginal research school that debuted in the 1960 was gradually nourished with reflections on designation of origin certification (AOC) and the question of defining the quality of products with respect to the territory of origin. Thus, research started to develop around the notion of “terroir”, the importance of quality products, social innovation and also around the questions on food identity. However, research questions on the relationship between food, culture, identities and mobility were somewhat lacking during the period studied, with the possible exception of developing countries, even though we know that both the diversity of agricultural production and agri-food systems and eating patterns have always been closely related, thanks mainly to the work of the Italian researcher [2] explained in a book published in 1932 that gradual changes in taste may occur. He takes the example of plant food in any given country and affirms that production is closely linked to the geographical position of the site of production. Furthermore, he points out that the development of international trade with overseas countries for over a century diminishes in a certain sense the influence of geographical conditions on eating patterns. [2] Wrote that "…we cannot affirm that types of diet with a local character will disappear, because each stage of civilisation in every place has its specific tastes that also involve the history of each people, its past, its ethnic origin and also the age of the culture in which it is set." (p. 584). With this in mind, we can better appreciate the importance of migration flows in understanding different eating habits and the diffusion or extension of food culture. Thereafter, distances constitute an essential feature in rendering the different eating habits of mankind more intelligible.

Man on the Move
Human beings have always displayed geographic mobility. Men traveled and food followed [i]. Historical examples abound: Marco Polo introduced pasta and ice cream to his fellow Italians and now we cannot image Italy without pasta and ice cream; the Arabs brought eggplant—that originated in India—to Spain and other parts of the Mediterranean. It should be remembered that Mediterranean cuisine did not have tomatoes, potatoes, corn and turkey before the fifteenth century. All this produce arrived thanks to Christopher Columbus and the colonization of the American continent. It is difficult to imagine Italian, Greek, Turkish or Lebanese food without tomatoes as an ingredient. It is hard to imagine Provencal “aioli” prepared without potatoes before the sixteenth century.

While the peasant agricultural system was still in balance with nature, thanks its close links with “terroir” and local eating habits and customs, humans increased their geographical mobility and, through contacts and cultural mixing, introduced new techniques in both farming and food preparation.

The first waves of rural exodus in Western societies started in the second half of the nineteenth century and accelerated with the spread of industrialization until the beginning of the 1970s. This human movement caused broader, national dissemination of products and culinary preparations that were otherwise strictly local. This first cultural exchange between rural and the urban people resulted in considerable diversification of consumption patterns leading to new market segmentation performed by food processing enterprises that drew on this broader cultural dispersion.

In addition to flow from the country to the cities, migration between countries and continents was also frequent. The latter accentuated the distance between an individual and his homeland. Large movements took place at the end of the eighteenth century thanks to the invention and development of means of transportation and the opening up of new territories like the Americas and Oceania and the colonization of countries in Asia and Africa. In this “modern” colonization process, the pioneers who settled in these “new” territories brought their home culture with them and passed it on to the natives. It is clear that this cultural "exchange" was performed more by force than as a result of a desire by the native populations. Nevertheless, some of the recipes and eating habits of the colonized territories became part of the culinary culture of the colonizing pioneers.

A new migration pattern was seen in the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, with men and women leaving countries for reasons of tyranny, starvation and poverty. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Lebanese, Chinese, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians arrived in North America and Western Europe.

In our opinion, social contacts and crossbreeding among migrants and members of the host society were fairly intensive during this period. Firstly, immigrants did not want to be assimilated or completely integrated in the host culture but on the contrary preferred to preserve their identity intact with its links to their home culture. The fact that they gathered in specific districts and even in specific buildings in their host towns led them to form “cultural islands” [3, 2]. [ii]. They thus represented their village and their homeland socially and culturally in a foreign country by coming together and perpetuating their home culture. Here, it is noted that the mental and cultural distance between a migrant and his homeland is inversely proportional to the physical distance that separates him from it. This is the first paradox concerning the (re)construction of the migrants' cultural identity.

Geographic mobility thus includes the notion of “distance”. We understand distance in two ways: the physical distance that indicates the separation between the individual and his homeland and the mental/cultural or cognitive distance that is directly linked to the acceptance or refusal of the inhabitants of the host society with regard to the cultural elements that the immigrant offers. The eating chain (“filière de manger”) should also be mentioned, concerning which Jean-Pierre Corbeau develops two paradigmatic axes of eating: the opening paradigm and the lock-up paradigm [4].

Distance(S)

The distance between a person on the move and his homeland becomes the main component of the processes of construction and deconstruction of food identities through cultural exchange, with this being achieved through geographic mobility. In fact, "…although eating should be structured, it is at the same time fundamentally structuring in itself: at the individual level because it socializes and acculturates children, and at the collective level because it symbolizes and translates through its rules the triumph of culture over nature [….] it thus conveys and materializes social rankings while allowing individuals to move within it, at least in an imaginary manner" [5] Eating is a social construct that can be located at the crossroads of a number of different cultures that sometimes conflict with each other and are sometimes in complete agreement. The gap between the types of eating that may be available and the type that he desires but that is materially distant is certainly one of the driving forces of his eating behavior. Depending on what he can possibly acquire, the individual will make choices that are directly linked to the accessibility of the desired objects. Limited access will generate expectation that will be a stimulus for him. The fact of being close to well-being may be as important as access to this object without any difficulty. Accessibility as a function of cognitive and physical distance renders the object or the image understandable to us and also enables the individual to conceive his ability to accept—or not—the eating culture that is not his own.

This kind of accessibility is very seldom used as it cannot be correlated directly with scarcity. It is not the scarcity of the object to be discovered that provides well-being and satisfaction but more the physical, cultural or cognitive capacity of the individual to access this object. This can be the case for foods as individuals do not always have sufficient knowledge to eat local products. Local foods are, in fact, reachable in absolute terms but few individuals have the cognitive capacity to access them. Stating this principle means that the capacity of individuals to access or to identify an eating habit that is different from their usual food consumption depends on their knowledge and their own culture.

Conceptions concerning distances are numerous; each social reality conceived in remoteness generates a particularity. The difficulty arising from the analysis of distances in the social sciences is the fact that this distance is always expressed as a Euclidian distance. However, it is clear that Euclidian distance is the first limiting factor in integration of the diversity involved in the notion of distance.  Temporality is included here to define this difficulty in defining the distances.

Distance can also be defined socially. Immaterial distances—symbolic or imaginative distances—are all as real as physical distances. For example, the shifting of food consumption patterns in order to reach a stratum in the social hierarchy is possible through culture. Here, the effect of physical distance is weaker than that of cognitive distance. It is possible to move from physical distance to cognitive distance by introducing living space in the analysis. The more an individual's location is his usual one, the more he will use his tacit knowledge. According to [5] tacit knowledge cannot be expressed without the action of the person that has this knowledge. Some people do not even know that they have it." Consequently, there is a relationship between physical distance (I am far away from my living space) and capacity for everyday actions.

Cognitive distance is a part of the notion of “distance” insofar as the science of cognition constitutes original analysis. Cognition concerns knowledge and memory and can be considered as an interdisciplinary field. There is a paradigm that attributes cognition to the abstract, universal and autonomous domain while another paradigm defines it in a social context in close relationship with objects. The latter definition brings originality to the notion of cognitive distance with spatial cognition involved simultaneously in the acting of players and the interpretation and the common knowledge of space.

Cognitive distance, that is to say the distance in which an individual is capable of representing himself in relation to his knowledge of space [6] is fundamental as it is used in as many domains such as food consumption, traveling and tourism. In fact, it is possible to be physically remote from one's homeland and have an emotional relationship with the other location that reduces the distance between them. Eating can be conceived on this basis as we know that physical remoteness is offset (balanced) by the nature of the knowledge that we have of the location. When the physical distance is great, remoteness from real space can always be considerable. Meanwhile, the cognitive distance is reduced because the individual uses his own knowledge only to imagine the quality of the products and objects around him. He uses the cognitive space that he imagines with the help of information that he perceives and the features of place that he has memorized. The more he materializes this location, in particular through its produce/products, the stronger the cultural anchoring of the individual to this territory, even if its culture is not his home culture.

The notion of distancing put forward by Norbert Elias can be mentioned here. He defined it as "a cognitive and practical attitude of the individual, his implementation by this in regulating these links to the facts, the ideas and the objects that surround him and help him in his social configurations." For N. Elias, "… distancing indicates the player’s capacity to control his affects, his emotions and feelings in relation to the events that he encounters" [7].

Paradoxes Arising From Local Anchoring: Links between Places, Products and Persons

We consider that anchoring is a form of paradox as we take into account the link between a person on the move and his homeland. The notion of homeland is often developed in the literature in association with the discussion on local products [8, 9]. Food consumption is probably one of the strongest links in our modern societies between the homeland and the host country of migrants. Raising the question of local anchoring is therefore of particular importance. The paradox of local anchoring is related to the fact that the dispersal of a food to places far from its original location will result in the reformulation of this product by foreign populations. This idea of local anchoring is fairly old as it is used essentially to explain the link between terroir and location [3, 9, 10]. In this respect, even if the literature on the latter link is very rich, the process of the constitution of local products may initially involve natural factors socialized by mankind. As was noticed by [11] "anthropogenic activities, knowledge, social organization patterns, practices and representations will give a sense to this link to a place in constituting local products." By extension, the constitution of a territory or a location with sufficient organization to have developed agricultural production of the "terroir" type naturally leads to the creation of a strong link between the notion of "terroir" and the location. The old definition of "terroir" is part of the geography of agricultural production patterns. As suggested by M. Bloch [iii], "terroir" is identical to “French field pattern”. This naturalistic branch of geography considers "terroir" to be a physical construct linked to nature. The point of view is strongly criticized by who explains that the point is more descriptive than explanatory. According to this author, events that separate human acts and natural acts are fairly scarce. He considers that geography must establish the link between human beings and natural environments. In this case, "terroir" can be defined as land perceived from the point of view of agricultural skills [12] [iv]. This definition attaches a limit (and subsequently an identity) to the terroir that is discovered thanks to the specificity of the agricultural use of the land.

Anchoring does occur through the link between the product and place via the natural terroir. There is also a link between the product and the individual that can be conceived as social terroir. The latter is related to a more common use of the notion of terroir. It takes into consideration the notion of region not only as a concept related to geography but also as a social construct resulting from the acts by human beings. Terroir is a rural region that may have an influence on its inhabitants [v]. In this second definition, social terroir can be considered as directly related to natural terroir. Social terroir helps an individual to define himself in relation to another person; Mr. X recognizes Mr. Y because they share a common identity or a common homeland. A group of people can develop and try to protect a number of affinities, such as a common accent that shows that they are from the same place [13, 14, 15, 16]. The group takes over a place by assembling and perpetuating a set of customs and traditions and culture specific to the region. This place then becomes theirs. Social terroir thus becomes a landmark for this population, a focal point where individuals are distinct from neighboring people. It becomes proof of deep rooting in a particular place where the intensity of the relationship between humans and terroir is highly significant. Social terroir expresses the venue for all social and economic acts and a set of values, including the eating habits linking the individual to his homeland. The expression of this relationship between the individual and his homeland becomes a continuum of the local culture. The link between individual and food via social terroir is much less sedentary and can be reconsidered in migration flows. Finally, the link between man and his homeland through the souvenirs of this homeland, through his patrimonial terroir, establishes the final element of this polysemous terroir notion.

In contrast with natural terroir, social and patrimonial terroirs are mobile as they are closely attached to the memories of an individual on the move. When the representations of these two dimensions of terroir are dispersed in consumption space, local anchoring via the memory of the individual or group of individuals loses its material being and can be passed on to other persons or other communities encountered by the individual/group of individuals meet on their route or in the host country [vi]. The paradox of local anchoring then arises as the link between humans and their homeland is not only via nature, but can also be via a great number of situations formed by the resources to which the migrating individual is deeply attached. It can be said that local anchoring is also transmission by human mobility and the acculturation process.

[i]A great number of researchers/authors have worked on this topic: Castro, J. (de) (1949), Malassis, L. (1993), Mintz, S. W. and Du Bois, C. M. (2002), Labarre M. de (2002), Koc M. and Welsh J. (2002), Toussaint-Samat, M. (2004), Corbeau J.-P. And Poulain J.-P. (2004), Regnier, F. et al. (2006)

[ii] The formation of cultural islands is not associated with the idea of ethnic segregation sought by immigrants. It is more probably a latent way of defending “oneself” in the process of (re)constructing socio-cultural identity against the background of a host culture that is both socially and psychologically fairly distant from the home culture of the immigrant. In this case, the reference to essentialism that could be made in this discussion can only be considered in a moderate manner, as put forward by Andrew Sayer (1997).

[iii] In Les caractères originaux de l’histoire rurale française, Volume I, 4th édition, éditions A.Colin, Paris, 1964, 261 pp.

[iv] Primary meaning in the French dictionary Petit Robert.

[v] Secondary meaning in the French dictionary Petit Robert.

[vi] Many authors witness this transfer of local knowledge to other people. For more reading, see Serematikis 1993, Caglar, A.S. 1995, Harbottle, L. 1996, , Gabbacia, D. 1998, Trubek, A. 2008

Figure 2: Defining territorial anchoring: interactions between space, products and human mobility

Examination of the diagram above shows that the link between the space and product is established by geographical proximity and thanks to natural terroir. When there is a physical distance between product and locality, the product will be denatured as the initial terroir cannot be found in geographical situations because natural terroir is neither transportable nor geographically mobile. When we take into account the link between location and individual, the relationship refers to the notion of patrimonial terroir. The physical remoteness of the individual from his/her homeland will activate territorial memory and reactivate a form of local anchoring related to small cognitive distance. This territorial memory can be collective and exchanged in the case of emigration. Finally, the link between individual and local product can be established through the social terroir in case of migration if cultural exchange allows weak cognitive distance. Nevertheless, this cross-fertilization has a sine quoi non condition for its success: the host society must not feel threatened by the migrants’ home culture. The paradox of local anchoring will endure through territorial memory as long as the geographical distance increases as a result of the emigration process.

Paradoxes Arising From Cultural Exchanges and Food Representations

Interactions between Cultural Exchanges and Food Representations

Changes in migrants' consumption patterns and the paradox that arises from different notions of “anchoring” can be better understood by taking physical and cognitive distances into account. The “anchoring” process can be associated with production locations while the notion of “mobility” helps to explain the consumption patterns linked to the places where people live. A double reading of the frame of reference is possible to define and identify the different production/consumption patterns. People on the move carry with them and promote goods, values, expectations and skills that they can (or cannot) mobilize in places that they go through or live in on the routes that they follow [17,18,19]. The question is then how they co-construct their food identity by cultural exchanges. This is what we call the interface, with the use of geographical proximity, cultural exchange or territorial memory, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Cognitive and geographical distances from the place of production and paradox in food representations

“Eating” is considered in its broadest sense, as a bundle of representations, points of view and practices of different players engaged in the production, commercial or non-commercial exchanges, marketing, preparation and consumption of foods [20, 21]. It can therefore be viewed as a connecting factor between places of production and places of consumption.

The first case (I) can be defined by local consumption patterns and is illustrated by the small physical and cognitive distances between the place of production and the place of consumption. Individuals are physically and socially anchored to the same location. In this case, the site of production of local products is not directly linked to the notion of “terroir” but physical closeness is a very strong factor. Own-consumption patterns in rural areas are good examples of this case. In fact, rural people consume what they produce but what they consume does not necessarily consist of locally anchored, “terroir” products.

This can be illustrated by many examples. In Turkey, the 'skin cheese' Divle is a farm “terroir” product of village of Divle in Anatolia, Turkey [22]. Sheep graze on extensive rangeland. The cheeses are prepared with no heating in sewn goat or sheep skins. They are matured in natural cavities called Obruk with chimneys running to a depth of 36 meters. Aeration and ripening take place from July to November. The cheeses are made by local farmers who know all the associated traditions. The flocks and the cavities are owned jointly by the villagers and form their immediate environment. There is considerable physical and cognitive closeness of local populations to Divle/Obruk cheese. David Sutton also described the way in which Easter lambs are cooked in Kalymnos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean [14]. The method sets the Kalymnians apart from other Greeks.

We can also give examples on the other side of the Atlantic of certain fresh produce such as pawpaw growing wild in the understory of unmanaged forests in northern Indiana. This is known practically only by the local population and serves as a tool of interaction between people from this region and their homeplaces [23].

The second case (II) shows glocal consumption patterns and includes people who settled in rural (or rurbanized) areas with a short physical distance to the place of production, but who consume industrially processed, standardized products. Here, the cognitive shift is strong and the lack of knowledge of the individual about genuine local products may lead him to eating products that are “modern fits” of old “terroir” products.

In this case, the characteristics (form, texture, aroma and taste) of standardized foods have become uniform during industrial processing. This is particularly true for products processed by “transportable” techniques or know-how through knowledge, and individual skills that are mobile [i]. In this respect, product origin is as much linked to the person who processes the product as to the place in which it is processed.

It is the case of “Lanquetot” brand Camembert cheese. Emilie Lanquetot set up a small dairy at Saint Martin de Bienfaite in Normandy, France, in the nineteenth century. Before her, Camembert cheese had been “invented” in 1791 by Marie Harel, a peasant who lived in the village of Camembert, under the supervision of a refractory priest [7]. In 1890, Mr. Ridel, an engineer, had the idea of packing Camembert cheeses in wooden boxes; this made them easier to transport and to distribute outside the production area. However, in the absence of any protective measure, the cheese can be imitated elsewhere within or outside France. In 1926, the Court of Appeal of Orléans confirmed that the “Camembert” name is generic. "Camembert de Normandie" made from raw milk and hand ladled has had designation of origin (AOC) since 1983. Lanquetot dairies were purchased by the industrial cheese maker Bridel in 1981 and passed into the hands of French multinational firm Lactalis (by then called Besnier) in 1983. The process for making Lanquetot Camembert was changed in the mid-2000s in order to by-pass industrial constraints and its “terroir” quality. It is no longer made from raw milk since the French multinational firm Lactalis decided to change its industrial strategy and broaden the Camembert cheese market. This strategy enables the firm to reach the Anglo-Saxon consumers who prefer to consume little or no raw milk cheese. Lanquetot Camembert no longer has an AOC quality certificate but has conserved in Normandy anchorage while profiting from greater social and cultural mobility to reach new consumer groups.

Another example is maple syrup from Canada and from Vermont in the USA. It is a syrup usually made from the sap of the sugar maple, red maple or black maple graded according to the Canada, US or Vermont scales based on its density and translucency. Syrups must be at least 66 percent sugar to qualify as "maple syrup" in Canada; in the US, any syrup not made almost entirely from maple sap cannot be labeled as "maple". Maple syrup and the sugar maple tree are symbols of Canada and several US states, particularly Vermont. However, maple syrup has been processed industrially for many decades and does not correspond exactly to the original recipe.

The third case (III) is a global consumption pattern stemming from strong physical mobility and a strong cognitive shift in which individuals have high social and geographic mobility. In this case, products are completely detached from their place of production. A good illustration is Budweiser beer, the world-famous brand brewed by the multinational firm Anheuser Busch. It has been brewed since 1876 using a specific technique that links both the beer and its brand name to a small Czech village called Ceske Budejovice. Despite protests by Budejovicy Budvar, a small brewer in the village for more than a century, Anheuser-Busch has kept this brand name without taking into account the geographical distance between the product and the place that gave the beer its name [ii]. It can be argued that the Budweiser beer made by the multinational group has only the reputation and the “image” of Czech beer and is a global, standardized drink matching the expectations of urban consumers who are cognitively and physically distant from the local beer brewed in Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic.

A more striking example of cultural, social and technico-industrial change is the history of “ketchup”. In her book “Why did they Name it…?” [24] Wrote that this world-famous tomato sauce was “actually “discovered” in the 17th century. English seamen whose ships were anchored in the port of Singapore were introduced to a tangy sauce called kechap which the native population ate with their fishes and fowl dishes. Back home in Britain, the sailors yearned for the subtle blend of fish brine, herbs and spices and tried to imitate it, substituting mushrooms, walnuts, cucumbers, and later tomatoes, for the Far Eastern ingredients they lacked.” Admired and used by British housewives, it then crossed the Atlantic and was introduced to the households of the “New World” where it gained mainly tomatoes as its essential ingredient. H. J. Heinz standardized and marketed the product towards the end of the nineteenth century and made one of its flagship brands throughout the twentieth century during an “internationalization” process. The global dissemination diffusion of a recipe that originated in the Far East resulted in a product that has little to do with the original “kechap”.

The history of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce is similar to that of “kechap”. According to the history narrated by [24], “Sir Marcus Sandys returned to his native England from India where he had served his country as Governor of the Province of Bengal […] He brought with him […] a recipe for a rare sauce, a secret blend of spices and seasonings from the Orient that imparted to food a new savor […] On his return to his country estate in Worchester, England, he immediately sought out the shop of two little chemists on Broad Street […] Messrs, John W. Lea and William Perrins. […] The two chemists received permission to sell the sauce to some of their other costumers, and soon its production commanded their entire attention. Eventually they permanently acquired the secret recipe from the appreciative old nobleman.” [24]. the sauce was then first marketed under the “Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce” brand in 1837. The British firm HP bought this small enterprise in 1930 and enlarged the industrial processing of this originally Bengali sauce. The brand changed hands and passed under the control of the French multinational BSN Group (now Danone) in 1988.  Danone Group sold this precious brand to the American multinational H. J. Heinz in 2005.

Similarly, the Asian products marketed by Mars Inc. under the Suzi Wan brand in Europe and Kan Tong brand-name in the USA are highly processed and globalized versions of original Asian sauces and recipes.

The fourth case (IV) is linked to what can be defined as “circular consumption patterns” in reference to “circular economy” [25] and can be understood in a context of migration in which geographical mobility is relatively large. The migrant moving away from the place of production and from the local product maintains his social anchoring. The cognitive distance is quite small and there is no cognitive shift. Immigrants who consume local products that they bring with them from their homeland or who buy local products imported from their homeland are show clearly that physical remoteness does not always mean cognitive remoteness.

Roquefort is a good example of those products that are locally anchored but travel with men on the move. Roquefort cheese is a raw milk blue cheese made only in the small village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the Aveyron departement of France since the first century AD. It is said that the Romans loved its flavor and paid high prices for importing it[iii]. In the 700s, the emperor Charlemagne enjoyed Roquefort at his Christmas feasts and demanded that cartloads of Roquefort cheese be sent to his residence in the north of France every year. The first recorded mention of "Roquefort" cheese is dated 1070. Roquefort cheese became so popular that Charles VI granted a monopoly for its manufacture to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in 1411. It is also recounted that French ambassadors imported and offered Roquefort cheese as precious presents to the authorities of their host countries where they were serving France. So, the first introduction of this raw milk cheese to the USA was by this “noble” route. In 1925, Roquefort became the first cheese to receive the designation of origin certificate (AOC) for its high quality. In 1930, Roquefort producers established the “Red Ewe” brand to indicate its authenticity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the French multinational Source Perrier and later Lactalis, used international marketing strategies for further development of exports of this special, high-quality product that is strongly anchored in the small village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon.

Champagne is another locally anchored product that travels all over the world and is widely recognized by a great number of consumers. In this case, there is a physical and social distancing because of the place of production (only in the Champagne region of France) and its high price, but the cognitive distance is fairly short because of its recognition by most people in the world.

At the edge of our frame of reference are the urban people who, "… in opposition to the artificial world of cities and to arche, rejected by modernity as routine and backward-looking, seek the natural, the rustic, the authentic with an Edenic view of rurality, which is raised to the rank of an anthropological universe of harmony between people and with nature, a kind of rurality that is raised to the rank of anthropologic universe of harmony among humans and with nature, an utopia of happy rurality"  [4]. These urban people reject global industrialization and standardization and prefer distant sources through the consumption of ethnic food and imported place-specific products [26].

Paradoxes Arising From the Changes That Occur In Food Representations through Cultural Exchanges

Distancing is a permanent combination of the real physical distance of the product from its place of origin/food culture and the cognitive distance between this and each consumer, whether an immigrant or native of the host culture. In this sense, the closeness principle as stated by [27] has two meanings:  proximity but and also confinement (introversion) in respect of any culture different to the heritage culture. People who are “enclose” or “confined” refuse any idea of accepting the features of another culture, feeling in danger of domination by the other culture. Here, according to J. W. Berry's framework, we talk in terms of the “separation” or “marginalization” of the individual who refuses to meet other cultures, communicate with people or be inspired by other societies [28]. This idea of “confinement” is also put forward by [4], in defining the “filière de manger” (eating chain).

The other culture is acceptable when the urban person shortens the distance that separates him from the distant land of origin of the product because this land is “non-urban” and hence “more natural and more rustic”. In contrast, city-dwellers may refuse dominant American culture, for example, because they consider that it threatens the integrity of their cultural identity through industrialization, standardization and the consumption of fast food. The taste of terroir is becoming internationalized and people in all Western societies wish to find local gastronomic treasures [4, 14, 29]. While fear of the unknown increases the “confinement” of individuals, distances are shortened by the increased mobility of foods and greater generalization of knowledge of a wider variety of foodstuffs from all over the world. This double movement affects food dynamics today.

As we have argued here, immigrant populations play a very important role in the dissemination and spread of local products and ethnic food. The role of ethnic networks in the dissemination of fresh orange in Uruguay and Argentina is a good illustration of this [30]. The authors observe that the spread of “fresh orange” in certain Latin American countries is no longer linked to the “family oligarchy of landlords” but to a “new class of immigrants" (op. cit. p. 275).
However, the host culture has also influenced the consumption patterns of immigrant populations. A good example of this is described by Geneviève Cortés (2000:294). Migrant families from a rural Andean region of Bolivia who settled in Argentina eat more meat than families that settled in the USA and in Israel even though the latter have higher incomes. She wonders about the influence of the Argentinian food consumption pattern and the popular asado (grilled beef) on the food habits of Bolivian immigrants. Perhaps the sociocultural positioning of these immigrants in the host society encouraged them to imitate richer immigrants benefiting from high social consideration by adopting their consumption patterns. Or they seek social prestige by mimicry in food consumption, forming a substantial investment for those low-income families. In this illustration, there is obvious cultural exchange in which immigrant families from Bolivia try to adapt their consumption habits to the dominant food consumption pattern of the host country (Argentina) by both trying to integrate themselves in Argentinian lifestyles and trying to rise socially. In fact, meat is consumed in Bolivia but the question here is rather to show how the immigrant families adopt a new consumption pattern richer in meat products. Meat as food does not have the same meaning or social status in Argentina as in the United States of America or Israel.
These examples show considerable changes in eating habits and in the foodstuffs purchased, produced and prepared. Because of the physical distances but also because of the representations “imagined” by the immigrants, the food is somewhat different from its genuine form as produced in its original location.

A number of cases support our argument. In fact, immigrant populations have introduced many dishes and foods in many Western European countries and elsewhere in the world, with changes made to their initial forms. Pizza, paella, couscous, döner kebab and feta are just a few examples of this phenomenon. Pizza, for example, is a re-appropriation and adaptation of the famous Italian recipe by the host societies, with changes made to form and tastes. Pizza has spread all over the world but is not standardized in respect to taste and ingredients and is now multiform an integrated in different cultures [31]. Distances between foods and their place of origin are very great. However, are they not close to the European consumers who eat them daily because they are close to their “carriers”—immigrants? In fact, it is important to take this contrast into account to understand the food dissemination patterns.

he present work provides the clues needed to conceive a set of interactions between migratory flows and the (re)construction of food identity through the theoretical concept of physical and cognitive distances. However, these interactions display three paradoxes: the first paradox is related to the notion of local anchoring and changes according to the image of their homeland generated by immigrants generate in their host societies. The second paradox concerns the change in foodstuffs and preparations because of the physical distance betweens the immigrant from his homeland. The last paradox is a kind of undefined antagonism between the physical and cognitive distances that shortens or widens the cultural gap between host societies and immigrants.

Food consumption can be easily considered as a form of heritage that is neither part of domestic relations nor part of civic space [32]. It is a common good that helps to link territorial and heritage dimensions. As a heritage, food consumption can be taken as “a resource or a tool that helps to construct a link to the territory for those persons who do not have a family tie or a historical link as their reference point” [33].

To the extent that the food is accessible through resources available at the place of production or elsewhere, spatial anchoring can be defined as the anchoring to the resources that are available in a limited and defined location. In contrast, social anchoring is defined as a cultural resource for food consumption that helps the consumer to break free of (physical) distance. In fact, the place of consumption can be directly linked to spatial anchoring in some cases and in other cases involved with social anchoring and then in other cases may be a combination of the two. In all cases, social anchoring is a strong driving force in the consumption of foods from remote places and should be considered as such.

We live in a world in which cross-fertilization is more intense than ever. However, host societies feel threatened by the introduction of new cultures. This dichotomy creates a strange situation in which people from different cultures meet and are physically close to one another but a widening cognitive distance generates a kind of “confinement” with regard to other cultures. Here, the cognitive distance becomes great because individuals try to maintain their own culture and feel threatened by the eating habits and the food that the "other" offers. The quasi-absence of communication between these persons with different heritage cultures increases these fears. [5] States the "homnivore" paradox while [4] introduces the notion of paradigmatic axes in defining his eating chain ("filière de manger"). Effectively, this fear has existed since the origin of mankind. The homnivore is attracted by all kinds of food but at the same time fears all risks involved in the ingestion of the unknown. Discovering a new food blocks him. C. Fischler defines this blockage as the homnivore principle. It is much more marked in urban areas with high population densities. Rural reality fades here and coupling of foods and territory is also forgotten. This loss of memory loss is at the heart of the homnivore paradox and increases the suspicion of urban people with regard to exotic foods. City-dwellers are highly skeptical about anything that they do not know.

However, in some cases, cultural contact sometimes results in the acceptance by the host society of certain foods or dishes because it does not feel threatened.  This to and fro between the aspects of the eating function is permanent. The individual tries to solve this paradox at all times. The most painful act for the Fischler’s homnivore is the passage of the food from the outside world to the individual’s body, from outside to inside. He calls this act the “incorporation principle” [4]. Likens it to cross-breeding, a mixing of the human body and the food through incorporation of the food by the individual. This is both an ordinary act and one with irreversible consequences. The irreversibility aspect is highly discriminating for the consumer as some eating events that generate phenomena that are counter to expectations. If we serve a sterilized cockroach in a glass of orange juice, nobody would drink the juice even if he were dying of thirst. The eating image is formatted by the articulation of a chain of reasoning that we make. In this domain, our (cultural and social) representations guide our actions.