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As an Italian living abroad, I think you're doubly subject to the huge projections around

Italian food. All the fads, all the tropes, you know, from how carbonata is this ancient, ancient

sacred, almost Roman recipe to how pizza has a similar godlike perfection.

A friend told Mariana she should check out the work of Alberto Grandi, an Italian historian,

author, podcaster and general rabble rouser. As soon as she did, she knew she had to write an

article about him. She also put us in touch. I am an economic history teacher in the University of

Parma, not teacher professor, yes, okay. Grandi studies how traditions are invented,

and when he started looking at the history of many quintessentially Italian foods,

well, he found a lot of inventions. He spoke to me with the help of a translator.

By teaching, he found out all these stories about Italian food being myth and legend,

so he became interested in debunking that. Take a food like pasta carbonara.

It's widely thought to be an historic dish from Rome, but actually in 1944,

an Italian chef making a meal for members of the US army used the rich cream, milk, butter,

and bacon of that army to whip up a new pasta. And that's how it was born.

Grandi's done similar debunkings with tiramisu, panatone, cheese pizza, and olive oil,

which he says wasn't popular before the 1950s. People in southern Italy used olive oil for lamps,

...