Over the last three decades Italian cuisine has gained in status as well as fame. It is not only served at family-style eateries, ice cream parlors, and pizza shops: high-end Italian restaurants are now listed among the most prestigious establishments in major cities worldwide. TV shows and magazines are full of Italian recipes, and culinary professionals become celebrities, banking on their Italian origins. As Italian cuisine acquires new relevance, scores of tourists flock to the epicenter of it all: Italy. So what is all the fuss about? How did Italian food manage to become what it is today? Why does it speak to so many people all over the world? Where does the apparently endless variety of local and regional cuisines come from? How did the dazzling assortment of wines, cheeses, breads, vegetables, and salamis come to be? In Al Dente , food historian Fabio Parasecoli answers these and many other questions while surveying the fascinating story of Italian food. The author shows that for centuries, countries such as Italy in the Southern Mediterranean fought against food scarcity, wars, invasions, and an environment that was often not very favorable to agriculture. With limited access to meat, dairy, and fats, they developed foodways that hinged on grains, pulses, and vegetables. It was only after the "economic miracle" of the late 1950s that the majority of the Italian population was able to afford a more diverse and abundant diet, albeit sacrificing traditional ways of life and culinary habits.

New packaging and conservation techniques, industrial mass production, and more sophisticated systems of transportation and distribution brought profound changes in the way Italians ate and thought about food. Gradually, the rest of the world has become aware that the practices adopted by Italians constitute a healthy eating model, and its reputation has been growing exponentially ever since.