António Souza-Cardoso, president of the association for the promotion of gastronomy and wines (AGAVI) explained that the idea began to take shape "a year and a half ago" as part of the cross-border cooperation project between northern Portugal and Galicia called InternovaMarket-Food, which is oriented towards business competitiveness and financed by European funds.


The project brings together five Galician and four Portuguese entities, one of which is AGAVI, and it was from there that the idea of applying for the Atlantic diet to be given UNESCO World Heritage Status emerged.


"The Galician-Durian recipe inspires all the gastronomy of the Northern region and Galicia itself", said António Souza-Cardoso, mentioning that products such as "octopus, seafood, fish, broths and soups or wines from the Alvarinho grape variety are ex-libris of these two regions" of the northwestern Iberian Peninsula.


"It is necessary to preserve and map this common recipe" and this involves the qualification of an Atlantic diet, as opposed to the Mediterranean diet, which in 2013 was given World Heritage status by UNESCO.


He stressed that he wants Portugal "to captain the team that will present itself to UNESCO with the project, considering from the outset that it "has all the requirements to obtain this recognition, as had the Mediterranean diet".


"We have to be the team captains of this crusade, which is to transform the Atlantic diet into a trendy and future diet", he added, "the application will be presented on 16 November, which is the International Day of the Sea".


"The other project we have is to do an itinerary of sea restaurants", certified with a seal of quality, called (A)Mar, recognizing that the fish and seafood they have on their menus come from "good practices of capture, preparation and confection", said António Souza-Cardoso.


The route of the establishments with this certification will cover northern Portugal and Galicia, and may be extended to all European countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean.


The Melting Gastronomy Summit aims to "transform Porto into the world capital of gastronomy" for three days, promoting a broad debate and reflection among chefs, nutritionists, anthropologists, philosophers, critics, influencers and various other agents linked to the agro-food sector.