79
‘Fake’ carbonara sauce causes outrage in Italy
(edition.cnn.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
79 points (100.0% liked)
World News
949 readers
599 users here now
Rules:
Be a decent person, don't post hate.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Have you tried real carbonara? It's not the same as this ready made goop.
Just to clarify: selling this fake carbonara is fine, I'm even sure it tastes fine. But calling it carbonara (without weasel-words like carbonara-style or some such) absolutely is a problem.
In my country (which is not Italy) the popular variant is making it with whipped cream, which again, tastes fine, but it's not carbonara, but many restaurants have the fake carbonara on their menu labeled as normal carbonara, which totally sucks. And shit like these glasses with fake carbonara just makes this worse.
Labeling for food is protected in Europe for this exact reason. It's done for lots of food from parmesan to champagne.
What they said. carbonara is an awesome dish. Selling whatever that is as carbonara is simply fraud and should not be allowed.
No way, that's just a Euro thing they force on the rest of us. People should be free to call their food whatever they want without some big rich country telling them what to do.
People should know what they are buying and consuming without having to submit it to a laboratory first. That's why naming things right is important.
Does Europe not mandate the inclusion of ingredients on packaging?
No wonder you get so easily confused about what is what and have to ban calling non-dairy milks milk to appease your corporate overlords.
Buying things for what they're called >> Reading manipulative "ingredients" list on packaging like food-coloring 25, totally-not-sugar 55, totally-thoroughly-tested-chemical 101
Yeah, companies should be able to advertise whatever way they want without restriction. Why should a bureocrat prevent me from selling dog liver labeled as vegan hummus?
/s, before you agree
Agreed. We can call silver, gold and make a few extra bucks. Try calling your local restaurant burger a Big Mac and see if McDondalds is ok with it.
People are free to call their food what they want.
You'll be surprised to learn that corpos are not people.
Even Wikipedia lists pancetta as an acceptable variant for carbonara.
If the definition is so important to Italy, they shouldn't be complaining to a supermarket, but should ensure the naming is protected, which unlike champagne or parmesan, does not seem to be the case for carbonara (probably because it's a style of dish and doesn't reference a place of origin).
I was expecting it to be with cream or garlic, but it’s pancetta vs guanciale.
First off, I’m a vegan with a genetic pork intolerance, so I really know nothing about the nuances of preserved pork cuts, but I have to imagine that a jarred carbonara made with guanciale would be worse than a freshly made pancetta “carbonara-style” sauce.
Or are they really so far away from each other?