Heritage and tourism are old friends. When we talk about heritage, we also talk about tourism. Completing the trinomial, culinary practices are added, and speak of a global trend in which food acquires new meanings: first through its patrimonialization and then through its touristification.

As such, food heritage can only be understood in terms of the role it has been given and the interests it serves, particularly from the point of view of tourism. Inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Heritage in 2010, the Mediterranean diet is an interesting example of alternative heritage. It is the first diffuse food heritage, since seven countries around the Mediterranean have jointly submitted the application to UNESCO. Because of the nebulosity and generality of its definition, this social practice, which extends “from landscape to table,” also reflects a variety of institutional appropriations, notably on the part of local institutions that propose activities and projects in its name.

Through a multi-site ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in 2021 in Italy (Cilento), Spain (Soria), and France (Marseille), I have attempted to understand how the local institutions of these communities view the Mediterranean diet, and how they convey its message. It is interesting to use the comparative approach between epistemic communities to understand how an eco-museum in Pioppi, a Spanish scientific foundation, and a museum of Mediterranean cultures based in Marseille are the institutional (but not exclusive) guarantors of the transmission of the Mediterranean diet.

Both for the local population and for visitors, the institution transmits an intangible heritage through varied types of education: dietary, health, museographic, and scientific. The aim of this presentation is to show how institutions appropriate and territorialize food heritage and use it for tourism. In this sense, is there a conceptual coherence between the message of the institution (and the tourism of the Mediterranean diet) and the understanding of tourists? On the contrary, is the result a shift in the meaning and interpretation of the Mediterranean diet? Finally, can we better define and understand this heritage, which carries so much meaning and responsibility?