Why It Matters Live Podcast Taping on Food Diplomacy

Please join us for a LIVE! taping of the CFR Why It Matters podcast. During this special taping and livestream, host Gabrielle Sierra and podcast guests discuss food diplomacy and share stories from White House state dinners where food helped create a lasting partnership.

Why It Matters explains some of the least-understood issues that are shaping our world. Every two weeks, host Gabrielle Sierra speaks to a diverse lineup of guests with the goal of simplifying a complicated global topic. Will the world run out of coffee? Will wars be fought by killer robots? Is Hollywood giving in to Chinese censorship? With a little bit of humor and a lot of curiosity, Why It Matters is here to dig in and find out. Please note Why It Matters LIVE! will appear on all podcast feeds and stream live through CFR.org. 

The CFR Young Professionals Briefing Series provides an opportunity for those early in their careers to engage with CFR. The briefings feature remarks by experts on critical global issues and lessons learned in their careers. These events are intended for individuals who have completed their undergraduate studies and have not yet reached the age of thirty to be eligible to apply for CFR term membership.

 

LAFOLLETTE: Good evening. If you could all take your seats. There’s some seats up here in front. Just a few quick announcements before we get the official program started. Good evening. Thank you for joining tonight’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting. This is part of our Young Professionals Briefing Series. I’m Stacey LaFollette. I’m managing director of the Meetings Program here at the Council. In addition to young professionals we have some CFR term members, many of CFR’s staff members and young corporate leaders here, joining in-person in New York as well as on Zoom. So welcome to everyone.

To our young professionals, I hope you’ve been enjoying the programming we’ve been offering you. We try to offer a program like this once a month to you all. So if this is your first time, we hope you’ll come back. And they’re either in New York or Washington. Another thing, we just sent our newsletter to our young professionals, which we do monthly. And it highlights resources on CFR.org, as well as recent events that have taken place not only for young professionals, but for CFR members. So there’s a lot on the website. I encourage you to take a look and check out all the resources available to you all, which we hope you’ll find useful.

Tonight, you all get to witness a live taping of a popular CFR podcast, Why It Matters. So it’s a really special, different evening. We encourage you all to react during the podcast. You can clap, you can laugh, you can, you know, express—you know, yes, anything. But we don’t want to hear your phones. So we don’t want to hear any bells or whistles or beeps. So if you could just silence your phones, that would be really, really appreciated. But, again, please feel free to clap or react in any way. We want participation from you all in the audience. It makes it more fun. So, again, if you could silence your phones. A reminder, this is all on the record. It is being livestreamed. So you really are part of this podcast. So it is really exciting.

The last part will be a question-and-answer session with you all. So stay in your seats when the official podcast ends, because then we’ll go to Q&A. So that’s the time when you all get to ask your questions. If you’re in the room just raise your hand, and if the presider calls on you, stand wait for one of these microphones, introduce yourself, and ask your question. We’ll also be taking questions on Zoom. So you can click on the “raise hand” icon at any point. And if you hear your name being called out by the operator, just accept the “unmute now” prompt, and then introduce yourself and ask your question. A reminder, this entire meeting is on the record. And we really hope you enjoy the live taping.

And now, please welcome our host of Why It Matters, Gabrielle Sierra. Thank you. (Applause.)

(Music plays.)

SIERRA: Everyone’s got to eat. Food is, of course, something we need to consume in order to survive. But eating also brings people together. After all, as famed Chef James Beard once said, food is our common ground, a universal experience. Hosting someone for a meal can indicate friendship or a celebration. And when it comes to international relations, sharing a meal can also be an opportunity to build trust between leaders, even at the highest level. As chef and author Anthony Bourdain said, with No Reservations, nothing is more political than food. I’m Gabrielle Sierra. And this is Why It Matters, live. Today—yeah. (Cheers, applause.) Yeah! Today, for this special live taping, we’re talking about Food Diplomacy, the power it has to facilitate connection and relationships, and even bridge cultural divides in times of conflict.

(Music ends.)

Thank you to everyone for joining us, live, and also to those of you joining us virtually. So while we will be joined on stage by our guest in a few minutes, we also had the chance to sit down with Matthew Costello before this live taping. Matt is the senior historian at the White House Historical Association. And we got to hear some of his favorite state dinner stories and gain some insight into the role food has played in U.S. foreign policy. So we have those recorded. And here he is to kick us off.

(A video presentation begins.)

SIERRA: So today we just want to narrow in on one topic, even though I have a million questions for you. So, the topic is something near and dear to everyone’s heart, food. So what is food diplomacy? And why does it matter, historically?

COSTELLO: I feel like it’s probably closer to your stomach than your heart. But yes, that’s a great question. You know, I think at its core it really is a very human thing. You know, this idea of people—on the surface, or on paper you may have very little in common with that person, right? You may—you may speak a different language, grew up in a different part of the world, different educations, different traditions, all these things that are so different. But one shared human trait that we have is I think there is sort of this general inclination to want to sit down and share a meal with someone else.

And really, you know, presidents have historically, you know, used these opportunities to try to get a better sense of really the leader that they are primarily dealing with, but also as an opportunity to reveal what they want to reveal about themselves, or about what really matters to them. I think it’s a way that our leaders can get to know each other a little bit better, know exactly where the other person is coming from. And there’s something to be said about sitting at a table and breaking bread. And sometimes even depending on what they’re drinking that can be helpful too.

SIERRA: I was going to say booze helps too. Yeah. (Laughs.)

COSTELLO: Yes, the old Roman, in wine there’s truth, in vino veritas. I think it’s a very human thing to want to sit down with someone else, converse, share a meal, and talk about things like hopes, dreams, goals, aspirations. I think that’s just—that’s something that transcends cultures.

(Video presentation ends.)

SIERRA: In wine, there is truth, but also in beer. Here’s a fun story that we learned while doing research for this episode. It’s actually sourced by my producer, Molly. And she brought it to me. Not too long ago, in 2019, Belgium had a parliamentary election that failed to produce a majority. Politicians from Belgium’s two big regions, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, were split and they refused to cooperate. So executives at Anheuser-Busch took it upon themselves to try to bridge the language divide. The Belgian beer company set up yellow lawn furniture along a 250-mile virtual border between Flemish and French Belgium, and invited locals to sit and chat with one another. The bait? Free glasses of beer. All right, the beer was not alcoholic, but still, people showed up. Conversation flowed. And it proved that one drink can bring people on opposite sides of the aisle together. And there are many more stories just like this.

So we’re going to get into all of that now. I’d like to bring up our very special guest here with us tonight, Johanna Mendelson-Forman. (Applause.) Hello.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Thank you for the introduction.

SIERRA: Oh, thank you. So Johanna is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, where she heads the Food Security Program. She’s also a CFR life member. Welcome to Why It Matters, Johanna.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, thank you, Gabrielle. It’s so much fun to be here, both live and with people on Zoom.

SIERRA: So to start, I must ask you, what is your favorite meal and/or drink to share with someone?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: You know, I thought about that question because a lot of people who do interviews on the radio say, what do you eat for breakfast? (Laughter.) And I think I don’t have a favorite meal, because we are a country of such abundance that I would love a Monte for dinner one night, and I’d love a pastrami sandwich in New York for another day. And there really isn’t a favorite. But I think it’s the privilege of living in a place of plenty where you can pick. And for someone like myself, who goes between the diplomacy and the security parts of the food, I always feel we’re very fortunate to be even able to ask that question.

SIERRA: Well, now you’re making me want pastrami. So—

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, that’s after the show.

SIERRA: That’s after the show. So it’s unusual for us to be sitting here talking about food on stage at CFR. Maybe behind the scenes, you know, for the meetings. But it feels like food is being recognized more and more as a form of soft power around the world. So we heard from Matt, but what does food diplomacy mean to you?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, do we have a couple of hours? (Laughter.) It’s interesting that you use the term “food diplomacy” in IR, because there are some particular terms of art, like food diplomacy, which refer to humanitarian aid, the use of food as a way to assist other countries, particularly, for example, you all remember the Marshall Plan, or the humanitarian assistance we give and support the World Food Program with. But culinary diplomacy, and its sister gastrodiplomacy, are another character. So culinary diplomacy is what Matt described and showed you on those beautiful slides, of coming around the table—and, by the way, he mentioned breaking bread. You know what—you all use the word company, don’t you? You know what that means, when you say I want company? You want to come together around bread, co-pan. So all the time when we have company we are coming together around bread, which implies more than one person.

But culinary diplomacy, just for our simple definitions, is really an act of a state where food is used as a tool for persuasion or coercion. It could be both. But it isn’t forceful, in the sense that it’s not kinetic. And you’re all IR students, you understand. It’s not bombs. It’s the butter. Gastrodiplomacy, which is become a term which is more popular since 2002 when the government of Thailand started promoting its cuisine, is the role of the government, or state, or non-state actors, to promote cuisines to stand out in a crowd. And we’ll get to that later. I know you’ll have some questions. But I just like to distinguish that and the difference, because since you’re asking about IR we have to be specific.

And then historically—I mean, I’m sure you all are aware of all these various dinners that you’ve seen in television programs of the kings and queens who hold these sumptuous meals, because food is power. Just the way I said we have abundance here, we have power through our kitchen. So when someone had feasts for days and days, and even in ancient times feasts were given when the Romans conquered an area. They made a feast as a way to get the leadership of that country to come together around the table. So there is this ancient background of culinary diplomacy. And then, of course, the modern that we just saw Matt describe in our own country and abroad.

SIERRA: So, I mean, do you feel like it’s gaining legitimacy as a tool in the foreign policy space?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I believe that food is the new internet. We communicate with food. And that’s a very important thing. I mean, just the way we had email and internet before, we use food to connect. And food is also entertainment. How many of you watch Food TV? You can admit it, even though you’re at the Council. Yeah, OK. So the point is, food is a new form of entertainment because it shows people competing, but it also shows the power that food has to connect each other. It’s our culinary DNA. And when you watch these competitions, you’re also being entertained by how people use their background, their history, their personal stories to connect with another person.

SIERRA: I know before the show in our pre-interview you had actually brought up something that I thought was so interesting, which was that even during COVID people were having virtual drinks, virtual dinner parties, that they were still drawn to this idea of sharing food even when we were far away from each other.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I think the Council still has virtual happy hours.

SIERRA: Oh yes.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: In Washington, at least. I don’t know, here in New York. But, yes, I feel part of people being alone is countermanded by having a meal with someone. And I was just reading an article about someone who likes to dine alone but the prejudice they feel when they go to a restaurant, because it’s normal for human beings to connect around the table. So that’s the other term I want to use, because I happen to be an academic, is commensality, which means coming around a table. And this term goes back to ancient Greece, when the family unit was very important and coming around a table for an occasion was not only sharing a meal, but it was about having a forum in which to discuss problems. So we are looking at something both very ancient and very modern.

SIERRA: I want to talk a little bit about tradition, because food is often a way to share culture. And while food may be gaining more legitimacy as a soft power tool, sharing a meal as an act of goodwill, as you say, is certainly not a new tactic. Which is why I asked Matt about White House state dinners, the top diplomatic dinner that you can be invited to in the U.S. And here he is to tell some stories.

(A video presentation begins.)

COSTELLO: (In progress)—very different from if you were to go back and look at the historical record. You’ll see references to things like state dinners in the nineteenth century, but they’re not talking about the state dinners as we think of today. Sometimes they use the same language to talk about dinners that they were having for members of Congress, or Supreme Court justices. There were receptions that were held every year as part of the Washington winter social season. So we identify today state dinners as really sort of one of the highest honors a visiting leader can get when they come to the United States. The first state dinner that we believe is sort of the first one in this modern form dates back to 1874.

And it’s when King Kalakaua, who at that time is the monarch—he is the king of the independent kingdom of Hawaii. And he comes to the White House and Grant hosts him, actually, over several days, about a week or so, in Washington. When he has this state dinner for a visiting head of state, that’s really sort of the first time that we acknowledge. There are other visitors that come to the White House prior to that. It seems like it’s more, like, princes, and cousins, and nephews of people who are affluent, well connected. But when we’re talking about a visiting head of state or a visiting head of government, that’s really the first time that the president hosts someone at that level.

SIERRA: So it’s a celebration. It’s not necessarily something you’re negotiating over a table. You’re celebrating something that’s already been achieved.

COSTELLO: Hopefully. It’s not—it doesn’t always go that way. Obviously, whatever’s happening in the world will also shape these decisions, right? Who are you trying to pull closer to you? Who are you maybe trying to help thaw relations with? Or who are you really trying to solidify and firm up support of somebody who maybe was a more traditional ally, and maybe they’re not quite on the same page with the new administration? So there’s a lot of different angles and perspectives to consider when you extend this invitation.

SIERRA: I love these state dinner stories. Are there any that stand out to you as significant?

COSTELLO: Well, I mean, the one that I’ve always found really fascinating is Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in 1959. And the reason that I’m so interested in it was because, you know, this is really sort of in the height of the Cold War. You know, Stalin is dying, and now the Soviet Union has a new leader in Khrushchev. And so, again, it’s sort of a feeling-out phase of will the Soviet Union continue to be sort of on the same path that Stalin had it? Will Khrushchev be more open or more receptive to changing some of those things, to working with the United States, to finding some type of shared, common ground, or shared goals? It's Vice President Nixon who goes over and is part of the kitchen debates in Moscow. And I think Khrushchev sort of puts it on tilt a little bit. He’s sort of grilling him about the excesses of capitalism and all these other things.

And so when they make the decision to invite Khrushchev to Washington, it becomes part of a larger multi-week visit to the United States, so that Khrushchev can go and see different parts of the United States. He can see different cities, different places, meet different people. Of course, you know, Eisenhower has him at the White House, as is customary, but they also do a reciprocal dinner for the Eisenhowers at the Soviet Embassy. And in both of those dinners, they are featuring sort of classical or traditional cuisines from their homelands. So Eisenhower has much more Americana-type style food, which, you know, Eisenhower, growing up in Kansas, spent most of his life in the military, he wasn’t somebody who had very opulent taste buds. And, you know, the Khruschevs, very, very similar.

When they had the Eisenhowers the embassy, they have things like stuffed partridge, borscht, macaroons, you know, something—it’s a lot of very Eastern European delicacies. So, again, it is sort of a way to sample the culture, the taste, the cuisine, of whoever you’re meeting with. And this visit is also particularly important because it’s the first state visit of a Soviet head of state. Stalin had never been to the United States. There had been Soviet foreign ministers, but this was the first time that we had an American president on American soil meeting with the leader of the Soviet Union. And it went fairly well. In fact, there were plans for a reciprocal visit for Eisenhower to go to Moscow, but then, of course, the U-2 spying incident happens in 1960. And so it’s just as quickly as some progress is made, some inroads are made between those two leaders, it can dissipate just as quickly as that.

(Video presentation ends.)

SIERRA: I’m going to blow up Matt’s spot here and say that he told me he’s never been to a state dinner, neither have I, but he is a professional to his core because I also asked him if he would try to crash on with me, and he said no. (Laughter.) So there’s a long history here. And although state dinners and hosting foreign delegates are part of a longstanding tradition, they’re evolving alongside the geopolitics of the time. Some are more formal. Others have been more impromptu, with meals taking place even on the battlefield. So, Johanna, along with your roles at the Simpson Center and at CFR, you also teach a course at American University called Conflict Cuisine: An Introduction to War and Peace Around the Dinner Table. I would love to know more about this.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, the Conflict Cuisine course started because of the international relations background I had working on countries that were emerging from conflict. And one thing that we know when we have conflict is we always have immigrants and refugees. And I thought, what an interesting thing I could do to teach students about a war, if they were able to talk about people who escaped. And in the city of Washington, or the metropolitan area, we have many diasporas of many conflicts from the Cold War.

We have a large Vietnamese population, especially after 1975 when Saigon fell. We have large population of Afghans who came in 1979 after the Russians invaded Kabul. We have Ethiopians. We have more Ethiopians in Washington than in Addis Ababa, because when the Communists took over the government, with the guerrilla wars that went on there, Ethiopians came to Washington. And of course, we had Central Americans because with the conflicts going on and the proxy wars there, we had the Salvadorians come, and also the Hondurans, the Guatemalans.

And so we have not only people who’ve experienced the sadness of war, but use this experience and their cuisines to start new lives. And that’s what this course is about, that you can become resilient and you can use your cultural background to create a whole new way of living, and food becomes that tool.

SIERRA: So we heard from Matt, but I’d love to know what are your favorite foreign policy stories to teach, where food or a meal was used to bring leaders to the negotiating table?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, there are lots of them. How many of you have seen Hamilton? All right, well, what was one of the main parts of Hamilton? It was the bargain—the dinner table bargain, where Thomas Jefferson brought James Madison, who was a Virginia congressman, together with Alexander Hamilton, who was our, at that time, secretary of the treasury, to create what eventually created this—almost brought down the republic, because it had to do with the assumption of debt. After the American Revolution, states were fighting with the federal government about who would pay for the debt of war. And Jefferson, being a clever diplomat, he had served in France as our ambassador there, decided that he would offer a meal and try and bring these two parties together.

And the ultimate result was the Assumption Bill. What happened is our capital of the United States at that time was in New York City, which is where Jefferson was living, in downtown. And he—the compromise was the following: Hamilton got his bill so that the federal government would become the source of credit for the debt. But Washington, D.C. became the capital to appease Madison, who was a congressman from Virginia. So there’s always compromise. And that’s what I think is important for you to remember. And we can talk about lots of dinners. There is a quid pro quo. While it’s pleasant to be over a meal, while you build trust—and there’s lots of psychological literature which shows that when you break bread with somebody, as opposed to doing it over a Zoom, you create a bond of some sort. And negotiations in business usually go better. There is something about the corporate lunch, without the martinis, that can do something for you.

But also, you do want something. So, for example, it was clear that Jefferson wanted these two gentlemen to solve a crisis. And it was a constitutional crisis, at the time. At the same time, we have, during World War II some very famous dinners where the allied powers—there was Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill from England, and then Stalin, were trying to figure out how they would overcome the threat of Nazism. And there were three famous conferences—one in Tehran, a second one in Yalta, which many of you may have read about, and a final one when Roosevelt had passed in Potsdam. These were culinary feasts. They were of a scale like you would see in the White House.

And what I think is interesting in all of these dinners is in the height of one of the most horrible conflicts in the twentieth century, the logistics of bringing this food to these conferences is in itself a history of the prowess of the military and military chefs, who were able to get things on dangerous supply lines. And also, the smarts of people—for example, it was clear Stalin knew that Churchill loved oranges. Well, there weren’t many oranges or citrus food in World War II, but he would bring oranges to Churchill every time he saw him. Or Franklin Roosevelt, who knew Stalin like bourbon in addition to vodka, and brought bourbon to the conferences. So these events, while they had very high culinary value, had underlying roles of trying to persuade, in very trying times, something that needed to be done. So there is this diplomatic component, which I think is a story that is of great value in the history of international relations.

SIERRA: It’s very intimate, you know, to know that about somebody. It’s also displaying that you were listening, that you’re, you know, trying to please them, and that you remember.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I have to put a cheer in for the women also, because there’s a wonderful book about—called The Daughters of Yalta. And Roosevelt brought his daughter to the dinner. Harriman, who at that time was the ambassador in Russia, and also Stalin’s daughter. They all came. And they were all instrumental in helping set up meals. And it was they who decided what the menus were, working with the chefs, and were recommending the protocols. So these daughters of Yalta, who were very highly educated women and trained women—Churchill’s daughter as well—were the people creating the backdrop for the diplomacy that was taking place around the table in some very trying times. And almost—you know, certain things almost didn’t happen.

SIERRA: I give them a lot of credit. I find menu planning to be stressful for my friends, so.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, you can use AI now. You can do AI.

SIERRA: That’s true. Yes. So the first World Food Summit was held in 1974. So tell me about that. What sort of lasting relationships came out of—well, what is it? But also, you know, what sort of lasting relationships came out of it?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, in 1974 there was a decision to hold a World Food Summit, because we were recognizing that as the world was developing and growing very quickly there was also a tremendous problem about global hunger. We saw huge population growth in Africa and Asia. And the Green Revolution, which was underway, was still not solving the needs of feeding everybody in society. Henry Kissinger, of whom you all are aware, was, of course, a very active Council member and a great diplomat of this country, was the leader of the U.S. delegation and helped create that event. But he left one lasting political memory, in that he pledged that in ten years no child would be hungry.

Now I say this because in 1974, there have been many food summits since that time, but the promise of no child hungry which he made—and it was probably the most well-known comment of the event—is still a challenge. But you all know about the Millennium Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. All of these different goals have a pledge to end hunger. And the most recent, the Sustainable Development Goals which end in 2030, have as a pledge to end global hunger by 2030. And because of all the things that have happened in our lifetimes in the twenty-first century, from the wars in the Middle East, from Syria, to the COVID pandemic, we will not make that goal. This goal is set by U.N. members, 195 countries, who agree on this. And no child hunger, while we’ve made great progress in certain areas, is still elusive. So I know that’s a long-winded answer to your question, but that’s where it goes.

SIERRA: So, turning back to Matt, I want to play just one final piece of our interview that we thought was fun, and actually turned out to be quite delightful. How food helped shape the relationship between presidents and the American people.

(A video presentation begins.)

SIERRA: Which presidents had the weirdest taste buds or food requests? You know, who ate what?

COSTELLO: As far as quirky culinary tastes, James A. Garfield enjoyed squirrel soup. So that was something that, I mean, not everybody today probably would go for. But in those days, we see these things kind of happen here and there. For example, there was a lot of interest in possum at one point as a delicacy in the United States. In fact, one of the most famous White House pets was a raccoon named Rebecca. And Rebecca was given to the Coolidges by a supporter from Mississippi in 1926. But the intent of the gift was, hey, you should eat this raccoon for Thanksgiving.

And the Coolidges could not—they just could not bring themselves to do it. I don’t know if it’s because they loved the raccoon, or they were like, no thank you, we don’t want to eat a raccoon. But they named her Rebecca. They turned her into a White House pet. And you can find some great photos online of her at the White House Easter egg roll where Grace Coolidge has her on a leash. And she’s walking her around, and the kids get to kind of, like, look at the raccoon. It’s very interesting, though, to see how that relationship between the American people and the presidents through food, and how that has evolved and changed over time.

SIERRA: Which president—

(Video presentation ends.)

SIERRA: We ask again. Would you eat a raccoon?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: No.

SIERRA: OK. (Laughs.)

MENDELSON-FORMAN: But Brunswick stew, which is made with a squirrel, is still very popular. And I know Jimmy Carter liked Brunswick stew. Now, I don’t know if they served it in the White House, but they certainly—it’s a staple in Georgia.

SIERRA: OK, yeah. All right. So we have to expand our minds and palates.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Exactly.

SIERRA: So I want to talk about something that you spend a lot of time looking at, you even brought it up before, food as a representation of a person’s country and culture, something that you bring with you as you move. A sort of movable feast. So you talked a bit about this, but how have diaspora communities influenced American cuisine? And how are we seeing this pan out in terms of U.S. foreign policy today?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, one thing about diaspora cuisine is we—unless you’re a Native American—we all bring different foods to this country. And people say, well, what is an American cuisine? And if you look at the surveys, I mean, a hamburger always comes up, by the way, as number one. But as different groups came to this country, until the middle of the nineteenth-century American food, as we knew it, was pretty awful. It was really mush if you were poor. I mean, lots of leftovers, ground up, and made into pie. But when we started getting immigration flows really moving, especially after the 1848 wars in Europe, we began to get Germans. We began to get Irish. And then in the beginning of the twentieth century, we had people from southern Mediterranean. We had an Italian migration. And then we had people from Eastern Europe. So we had the people from the Jewish population from Russia.

The cuisines of the United States are so diverse that what it does is it makes it possible, in this melting pot, for everybody to enjoy the different types of foods that we eat. Just walk down a street in New York and look at the diversity of cuisines. But you don’t have to be only in New York. Look at the influence of Mexican cuisine in our culture. We have regional American Mexican food now. And it’s a cuisine. So that’s one part of it. But food can also be used to brand a country. And I think this is the important point. Nation branding, you know what that is? Well, we know about branding. Nation branding is countries like to stand out in the crowd. So if you’re part of the big Group of Twenty, you know who you are. But if you’re a little country like Thailand, and you want to stand out—even though it’s a beautiful kingdom—how do you stand out?

You create a program to promote your cuisine. So why are there so many Thai restaurants around? Have you ever noticed how many Thai restaurants there are? That’s because the government of Thailand actually subsidized its foreign nationals to open restaurants. So starting in 2005, Global Thai became a program of the government of Thailand to promote tourism to Thailand, but also to promote its cuisine. So many countries now do this. This is not unusual. Mexico has Ven a Comer, its own gastrodiplomacy program. There are Japanese programs. There are programs from China that have their own culinary diplomacy, not that China needs more elevation of it is cuisine. But Malaysia has a program. India has the program. In other words, countries see food as part of tourism.

Now, about 65 percent of people who travel, at least in the U.S. and Western Europe surveys, travel to eat. Don’t you like to eat when you travel, and try new cuisines? Food is a very important part of the economy. And for the United States, it’s extremely important. We promote food as part of our exports. A quarter of the U.S. economy is food based. And so when an ambassador goes to represent us, for example, in Norway, our ambassador to Norway, who wrote a book, recently, talked about promoting California wines in Norway, which, by the way, were very popular. He did it because he liked California wines, but he was also promoting a business.

The same with Korea. You know, Korea promotes its cuisine through its food. So it has wonderful food, and there are many great restaurants here in New York in Koreatown, but all over the United States. But it’s also to promote export products like fish and soy. So you have this nexus of economy with the whole use of food, which is something that’s accessible. Food is very accessible. You don’t need to have an IR degree to eat. But you can learn about a country through your palate. And that’s part of the goal.

SIERRA: Well, I was going to ask you, what is the relationship between food security and diplomacy around the world?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, food security is very, very different. And I was just thinking, as we were in the prep room, in 2015, which is a decade ago now, the national intelligence estimate, which is something the CIA does on different issues, declared food security a national security issue. And why is it? Not because we had a lack of abundance of food in this country, but they recognized that as the population grew, as climate change had an impact on growing patterns, that we were going to have a problem globally if we did not address global food security. So I think one, perhaps, of the tragedies happening as we speak is the lack of recognition of how vital food assistance is to stability in other countries. Because, you know, you don’t have to be Bob Marley to say a hungry belly is an angry man. I mean, that’s all about anger. When you’re hungry, you get angry. And so there was this security interest that was very much a part of our own diplomacy and international relations.

SIERRA: So it’s got that soft power element, but it also very much has this security piece.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Absolutely. Right. And in fact, we did work a few years ago I guess with the State Department and the military training academies to get a course on food security as part of the regular curriculum, because we felt that if you were a soldier, or sailor, or a marine, or an airman, you needed being able to understand the power of food on the ground when you went into a country. Because the lack of it could be a danger.

SIERRA: So looking forward, and this is a big question, but what are your thoughts on how we could and should use food diplomacy to face looming threats?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, we have lots of threats. We have lots of existential threats. Climate is certainly one of the biggest. And also, we still have lots of disease and hunger as a result of that. The good news, and there’s lots of good news in the food space, is that the technology around food has grown so that—I personally feel, with the technology that I understand, and I’m certainly not a scientist, there are great advances in agriculture, great advances in farming that will help feed populations going to midcentury. But there are also many unknowns. And that’s what you all, in your generation, have to solve. We need to figure out migration, because climate migrants are one of the biggest challenges we face. Even when you are a farmer, if you can’t farm because of a drought, you leave your land. Urbanization is a result. And the world is much more urban than it’s rural. So who is going to grow your food going forward, if you don’t have people living in rural areas? How are you going to farm if there’s no water? How are you going to farm if there’s no energy?

So I think the technology and the solutions are there and being developed, but they’re not equally distributed. And that’s the biggest challenge. Africa has the largest population growth projected of any continent in the world, and yet that’s an area which could be potentially very fertile and would grow many lands. But what happens? You have conflict. What do conflicts do? If somebody is coming in and trying to steal your farmland, you’re not going to be able to plant, you’re not going to be able to harvest, you’re not going to be able to conserve seeds. So we have these challenges that keep going and really deeply affect the way we look at the future. And I’m hopeful that the future will have many more positive inventions, but we all are guardians of this little planet that we’re on. And we have to recognize how to protect what’s there, and to address threats when we face them.

SIERRA: Speaking of technology, you said something very interesting to me when we spoke last about how AI can’t taste. I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that, as we’re all terrified—or maybe I’m projecting—(laughter)—of AI and what’s to come.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I’m older than you and I’m not terrified of it. (Laughter.) But I’m fascinated by what people are doing in the food space with AI because now people can create menus. And you can tell somebody—you can talk into your ChatGPT and say, OK, I have eggs, and I have butter, and I have a piece of meat, and I have these vegetables. Create a dish that I can cook. And, you know, less than thirty seconds later it will create that dish and tell you how to make it. Similarly, chefs are using these types of techniques to create menus in restaurants.

I recently spoke to a chef who was a chef in the Hiltons in England. And he said, oh, I always do my menus on AI now. So, you know, here you’re paying $300 for a dinner, and a computer is making the menu. But I will say, one thing AI can’t do for us is it can’t taste. Taste is a human skill. And, you know, if it will taste good, I don’t know. But flavor profiles, which are the key to culinary, you know, prowess, require a human taste bud. There’s a whole field of neurogastronomy, which is a very serious field, about how your nerve system tastes. So will we have bots that can taste? I don’t know. Maybe so. But I’m more skeptical of that, that we still need commensality and community in order to be able to taste things.

SIERRA: Well, we’ve reached our time limit. Next time we’re together, it’ll be over a meal. Thank you so much to everyone for being here. We will have fifteen minutes for questions for Johanna, but first let me read us out to our theme in the usual manner.

(Music plays.)

For resources used in this episode and more information, visit CFR.org/WhyItMatters, and take a look at the show notes. If you ever have any questions or suggestions, or just want to chat with us, email [email protected]. Or you can hit us up on X at @CFR_org. Why It Matters is a production of the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed on the show are solely that of the guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. This episode was produced by Molly McAnany, Justin Schuster, and me, Gabrielle Sierra. Our theme music is composed by Ceiri Torjussen. Huge special thank you to Liz Lowe, the events team, the AV teams, and meetings teams for letting us do this, putting this together. You can subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your audio. For Why It Matters, this is Gabrielle Sierra signing off. See you soon. (Cheers, applause.)

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Thank you.

SIERRA: We did it all right. Whew. All right.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Don’t be—don’t be shy.

SIERRA: Yeah. So just a reminder, this part is not being livestreamed, however it is still on the record. So, you know, don’t scandalize yourself. And when we give you the mic, again, as Stacey said, stand up, tell us who you are, affiliation, and give us your question. Yes. Oh, yes, and wait for the microphone. I should have said that too.

Q: Good evening. My name is Ehianeta Arheghan. I work in tech policy and also represent the United States on the delegation to the Y20 this summer.

My question is in regards to food being used as a tool not for diplomacy or for any of the other wonderful things that we’ve discussed, but as an act of war. Particularly when I think about conflicts, like what’s going on right now in the Gaza Strip, we see food and lack of access to food being used as a tool of discrimination and a tool of intimidation. And I’m wondering what can be done to safeguard the idea of access to food as a basic human right. Thank you.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, that is a very important and appropriate question. The weaponization of food is not a new phenomena, but it’s being used more and more frequently. Why? Because it’s the cheapest weapon of war. Any authoritarian can take food away from a person. That’s what we saw happen in Syria, where the Syrian government had control over the granaries and people were not able to have access to eat. But when there are nonstate actors, nonstate actors also rob food from innocent farmers. They go into villages, they sack villages, and food becomes weaponized. And then there is also the psychological role of weaponization of food. All you have to do is think about what happened in the Ukraine with the fight over borscht. And that’s gastronativism, as we call that, where the Russians and the Ukrainians fought about who owned borscht and created a scandal.

And we never even got into the UNESCO decision—UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Cultural, Scientific Organization, actually has something called intangible cultural heritage, which food is among them. I should sadly say the United States is not a signatory to that treaty. But, yes, food figures very heavily. If you have a UNESCO seal of approval for your food, you then can think that you’ll get more tourism. But not to make light of your question, because food is weaponized all the time. It is not going away. And as long as we have the kinds of conflict we see, both with nonstate actors or in interstate conflict like we see in Ukraine—where look what happened to the wheat fields, the most—the richest soil—the richest soil for grain was taken over and land mined. This is the kind of weaponization that will endure for years. So yes, of course. And it would be a subject of a whole other podcast. But thank you for your question. It’s very important and useful.

Q: Hi. My name is Hall. I’m a term member here.

I want to ask about regionality. So I’m from North Carolina. My barbecue, both styles, are better than anything St. Louis could provide. And as you know in other countries, let’s take France for example, there’s some regional rivalry—Brittany and Languedoc have different food. So when we think about food diplomacy, how is the balance between regionality and national pride managed, from what you see?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, food can create lots of problems. You know, and you’re right. And I don’t want to take sides on your barbecue debate, but just a little aside. A few weeks ago I had an El Salvadorian, second generation refugee, who was up for a James Beard award for the best barbecue in the United States. He came to the United States, fell in love with barbecue, went to Texas and North Carolina to learn, and is now a barbecue master. So you see, it doesn’t take any nationality to become a barbecue expert. But to get back to your regionality, there are actual wars going on over food. For example, you all have eaten dolmas and—you know, stuffed grape leaves. You eat them all across the Mediterranean, all across the Levant. Azerbaijan and Armenia have wars over who invented the dolma. There’s actually an office and the Minister of Foreign Relations in Azerbaijan to retain the integrity of the dolma.

Food is national. And it food nationalism is very much an important part of a country’s identity. So when you have these kinds of situations where countries, because a lot of these foods were invented before the borders were ever put up, you have a, you know, I own this. And it’s really not true, because if you look at the history in the spread of cuisine, you know, the Ottoman Empire spread for hundreds and hundreds of years across the entire levant and the Middle East. And yet, different cultures created variations on this. So regionality is important. And you don’t want it to create a war. But of course, there’s a recognition that different foods from different regions, even within the same borderlands, have different ways and variations of making them.

But they can build peace. And I just want to add one thing to that. Armenia and Turkey have had a very tragic history that has existed. But a group in London, International Alert, and a group of caucus leaders brought women together from two sides of the border—Turkish women and Armenian women. And what they did is they had a translator, because two different languages, and they started talking about what they were cooking. And by the end of that exercise, it turned out that the Armenians on one side of the border and the Turkish women on the other side of the border were cooking the same food. And it was that recognition that they really shared a common root that began to open the dialog between these two towns on either side of the border.

So you have this way of dispelling sort of inherent prejudice through the use of food. Will it build peace forever? Of course not. But will it create in a community some rapport? I mean, I think there are tools that you can use. I don’t know if that answered your question, and I’d love to hear more about it after, but I hope I gave you some answer.

SIERRA: Is there anybody—good, OK, go ahead.

Q: Hey. I’m Lincoln. I trade agriculture commodities—(inaudible)—of a lot of interest to me.

One thing you highlighted is, and I think it’s totally right, that advances in technology have enabled huge growth in ag production. We do see from a humanitarian perspective, of course, that’s a great thing. For the farmers in the U.S., and Europe, and other high cost of production areas, that can be very damaging thing. And so I’m curious, like, when you think about, from a policy perspective, you know, there’s subsidies, there’s degrees of protectionism, et cetera, but kind of how should policymakers think about that tension? And what levers can they pull to protect the farmer, while also enabling those gains?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Enabling gains, is what you said?

Q: Yeah.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: We could have a long, long bit about subsidies.

SIERRA: Giving us all sorts of topics for new episodes.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Yeah. I think, yes, the United States farmers, you know, have bad years and good years depending on the harvest, but what has guaranteed them in the past is the subsidies that are received through the United States Department of Agriculture. We have no farm bill right now, which is, I think, a problem for all American farmers. And we have competition because we’re not the only country that grows large amounts of wheat or soybeans, which are part of our largess, and also part of our trading. So I think there isn’t one right policy about agriculture, but the way we do agriculture is definitely changing. And I don’t think that the policy mechanisms that we currently have, which is mainly the subsidies for bad years, is the only solution.

We can’t feed everybody on local farm-to-table regenerative agriculture. It’s just not going to work. The scale we need to feed this planet is much larger. But I think we need policies that respect the smaller growers and communities and help those growers, and a lot of people are doing it, coupled with big ag, which we also need to survive. We also need to uncouple the fact that only six companies in the world trade large-scale commodities. And that’s another problem. There’s a monopoly on commodities, as you well know since you trade it. And we would be better off if we could open that up. And especially as African agriculture comes of age in the next fifty years, there are going to be many challenges. So I think your point is right. And you should join a policy community and start thinking about it, since you work on the business end.

SIERRA: Yes.

Q: Hi, thank you. My name is Cliff Hunt. I’m with NYU, Langone Medical.

As someone who sits in the intersection of food, policy, and business, I actually want you to expound a little bit more about how businesses can help further culinary diplomacy, especially as, you know, businesses sometimes move the needle on certain things depending on the nation that the business is housed, or all of the assets and exports and imports that they have power over. So if you could just talk a little bit more of how businesses can really help, especially if they’re social enterprises like organizations like Eat Offbeat, or Culinary Diplomacy Project, or some of those that are using food diplomacy to help further their mission and actually bring more peace into communities. So if you can talk about that, that would be great. Thank you.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I thought you were going to ask only about food is medicine, but I think what’s—which is a whole other area which could be a podcast. But the private sector has been responsive to public demand on policy. I mean, just look at the whole issue around sugar and soft drinks, for example. That has been a great revolution in my own life, of a recognition that large amounts of sugars are not necessarily good for you and produce tooth decay. So I think it’s a combination of public demand and education of the public around the fact that the more food that is processed, the worse it is for your body, is going to make a dent. Because it’s only when the consumer demands something, at the end of the day, that things are going to change. If you accept what you’re given, then you don’t make those changes.

But I’m a great believer in a lot of these school lunch garden programs, which are teaching kids about the importance of vegetables. I think some of these programs will create new demand in the private sector to produce much higher quality food. I believe the school lunch programs are going through great reform right now so that not everybody is getting a bag of, you know, Fritos, and they’re getting real food as opposed to processed food. But it’s going to take education. It’s going to take people like you who are training people. And it’s going to take a lot of community sentiment to make it happen.

SIERRA: Liz, I think, had mentioned there’s a virtual question.

OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Leila Pifko.

Q: Hi. Can you hear me?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Hello?

SIERRA: We can hear you, yeah.

Q: OK, perfect. Hi. My name is Leila Pifko. I’m also associated with the Stimson Center.

And my question is, we’ve talked a lot about the role that food can play at these state dinners, the different ways. And so I was wondering how allergies have played into those state dinners, or perhaps to tailor it to you, Johanna and your experience, how that has played into refugee communities, immigration, et cetera. Thank you so much.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: You’re talking about food allergies?

Q: Correct.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Ah, well, I know for state dinners, this is true. And, by the way, we not only have state dinners but we have state lunches, because the State Department dining room does the luncheon for a state visit, and the White House does the dinner. Did you know that?

SIERRA: No, I didn’t know that.

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Yeah. So that’s a whole separate chapter.

But of course today we’re much more cognizant of people’s food allergies, people being vegetarian, people being gluten free, for a variety of reasons. And if you go to a dinner, you are certainly going to be screened beforehand to know what kind of food you eat. And I think that’s, once again, the community, both the medical community and the public, demanding that we recognize a diversity of tastes. I remember, you know, in Europe years ago, you couldn’t find a vegetarian restaurant, and it’s still very hard in Europe to do that. But from a diplomatic side, serving somebody the right food that he’s or she is allergic—not allergic to, is important.

Now I’ll tell this story that I got from Alex Prud’homme, who wrote a wonderful book about dinners of the presidents, is one of the things that President Trump did to somebody—a well-known politician whose name I will hold back—is that he knew that this person was allergic to shellfish, and insisted that he eat the scallops at a dinner. So I think that food allergies can be weaponized. And we have to watch out for this. This happened not while he was president, but before. And it’s an anecdote in the book. But as I say, you have to be careful when you’re inviting people to your home, which is the nation’s home, what you put on the table.

And even when Sadat—Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, and Menachem Begin came to the White House, when they signed the famous peace accord between Israel and Egypt, one of the biggest challenges at that time was the creation of a kosher menu and a halal menu for the people who were attending those meals. And it was all done very quickly, but with all respect to different cultures. So I don’t know if that answers, but I’d be happy to talk to you more about that.

SIERRA: Yes.

Q: Thanks very much. Jameson Lisak, I work for Control Risks.

My question for you is about the future of, particularly, U.S. gastrodiplomacy. To contextualize, it seems to me that we had a very effective gastrodiplomacy during the Cold War and immediately after, with the spread of American fast-food chains. Where the spread of McDonald’s or Domino’s around the world was seen as going hand in hand with the spread of liberal values. Has that turned against us now with shifting consumption trends where, maybe both inside the U.S. and outside, people see these chains as unhealthy or as cheap? Does the U.S. have something to offer to the rest of the world in terms of development of its gastrodiplomacy?

MENDELSON-FORMAN: Well, I would question whether McDonald’s is part of gastrodiplomacy. But we certainly—as something that we promote—is the fast-food chain. And I don’t think that’s going away. In fact, I had a student from Moscow State University who was working with me right after Ukraine was invaded by Russia. And one of the first things that Russia did was they closed down McDonald’s. And he sent me a picture when he got back home of the McDonald’s with a different name on it, but they were serving the exact same menu. So the popularity of, you know, the fries and the meat remains.

I think gastrodiplomacy is really promoted by citizens. So there is a great demand for something that is different than your own cuisine. And I feel McDonald’s has actually done an interesting job. I mean, how many of you have eaten McDonald’s in different countries? There’s a cultural sensitivity to those McDonald’s that I think is remarkable. So in India they have the McVindaloo. In France, they have the Croque McDonald. There’s an effort to actually localize the food. In Japan, you can eat rice balls, which are a very popular food, in the McDonald’s alongside with your Chicken McNuggets. So I believe—I say it’s the anti-American type of component, because it respects the local culture to draw people in.

As far as its linked to democracy, and Tom Friedman’s famous Golden Arches Theory of Democracy, which is, I think, what you’re referring to, I think he’s retracted that idea recently, with all the crises that have taken place in the world. But food does create a way to bridge differences. And even your having dinner with someone from another country or sitting around the table with someone can have a positive impact. You know, soft power, and you know this, Gabrielle, is hard to measure. You know, we can’t put a number on it. But we know that it builds up over time. I mean, the whole American project is a form of soft power, our ideals or our values. We can’t measure it in numbers, but we certainly know that we’ve been effective because people want to come here. People want to visit. Maybe not now, but people want to visit. People want to come in. People want to eat our food. People want to buy our products.

So that is a very important thing. But why it suffers—and this happened with the culinary chef’s corps when it was first created in, I think it was, 2015 by Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, is that the people at the State Department did not know how to measure its effectiveness. So, yes, we sent chefs to different countries. They cooked at embassies. They brought back wonderful stories. They were ambassador chefs in the sense that they were diplomats. But Congress couldn’t measure that. Now flip that to the Department of Agriculture, which has a culinary diplomacy program. They don’t call it that, but it’s a trade and export program.

What do they do? They send chefs around as well. But what do those chefs do? They cook with Idaho potatoes. They sell lentils. They make lentil soup. So we use the food as a tool of export. And they can measure that. They can tell Congress, well, you gave us this money to have the Cattlemen’s Association sell American beef abroad. And I was, oh, yeah, and that affects our constituents. So we have to find a way, and this is something for you all to think about, of how the goodwill and feelings that we generate by having people, chefs particularly who are great advocates, go to other countries to build the American brand and American values. That’s what I think we need to find.

SIERRA: Well, we are out of time. I am a Taco Bell girl myself, if we’re sharing. You all have many assignments about going out into the world and bettering everything. And, Johanna, I cannot thank you enough. This was so much fun. I’m hungry. So truly, thank you. And thank you everybody for coming. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.