I ran across an interesting website the other day that made me really stop and think about the food I eat. Although I enjoy fine food, I’m too often a customer at fast-food chains. As a busy mom trying to juggle everyone’s schedule, I sometimes throw my hands up and give in to the inexpensive and easy way to feed kids while keeping on schedule–the drive-through.
There is opposition in the world to these ubiquitous establishments and their food, and it’s not just from health-conscious people a la “Supersize Me.” There is real concern that the entire culture of food and its diversity is being eroded.
Slow Food, started in 1986, is an organization whose aim is to “protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life.”
The website I saw, slowfood.com is all about the Slow Food movement, which I’d heard of a few years ago but didn’t really understand until I started reading the information on their website. Slow Food is, according to their own statement:
“Founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, Slow Food is an international association that promotes food and wine culture, but also defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide.
It opposes the standardisation of taste, defends the need for consumer information, protects cultural identities tied to food and gastronomic traditions, safeguards foods and cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition and defend domestic and wild animal and vegetable species.”
Slow Food’s mission is “Through its understanding of gastronomy with relation to politics, agriculture and the environment Slow Food has become an active player in agriculture and ecology. Slow Food links pleasure and food with awareness and responsibility. The association’s activities seek to defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread the education of taste, and link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives.”
Slow Food has three main areas of action and education. They are Defense of Biodiversity, Taste Education and Linking Producers and Consumers.
I think this is all well and good, but practical? How do I participate beyond becoming a member or supporting my local farmer’s market? The website, and maybe the movement itself, is a little sketchy on this point. I’d like to hear from any of you who participate in the Slow Food movement and how you do it.
Perhaps its best tool is the same as the effect it had on me–stop and think before I head through that drive-through. Food for thought.