Home > About AIG > Historical Context

Historical Context

The History of AIG: a reminder of changing times

Founded in 1983 after a true culinary revolution, initiated by several French Chefs (Paul Bocuse, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Alain Chapel, Michel Guérard and others) and vulgarized by two French journalists Henri Gault and Christian Millau, the International Academy of Gastronomy encompassed all steps of the evolution of modern gastronomy.

France – then considered as the best place for cuisine – made available to foreigners the Chefs’ know-how.

In 1988 Hervé This, a chemist and physicist, developed a “molecular cuisine” on the assumption that heat transforms food; later the move was the dismantling of the food itself.

In the meantime regional Chefs rediscovered recipes from the countryside (“terroir”) and by using the principles of “nouvelle cuisine” they made them more palatable.

Chefs tried also to give more attention by selecting the best quality of food and to promote new recipes as a repliqua to standardized products of the agro food industry.

Air freight growth as the widespread use of the cold chain helped to use, at any season, products other than locally.

On the other hand, numerous books were edited with a correlative higher consciousness of eating better.

All the above facts contributed to the modern planetary cooking model.

Nowadays several threats lurk:

• The growing standardization of agro good industries.
• The quick fooding in urban areas because of traffic congestion and reduced working hours.
• The relative disappearance of meals at home which implied a loss of basic food education, especially for the younger generation.

These trends all call for a better knowledge of a healthy cuisine in which gastronomy and preventive medicine work along to develop better taste and savor.

Today gastronomy is everywhere, particularly in the media and in daily social life.