Slow Food
2/3/2009
by Amy Buchanan
We’ve all been there.
Too tired or too rushed to cook, we make a quick trip to the drive-thru to pick up dinner for the family. Fast food restaurants provide a quick, easy answer to the interminable question, “What’s for dinner?” But the food that they serve up is often laden with fat and calories and who knows where the ingredients in it originated and how they were farmed or produced.
In this fast-food nation, where convenience is often prized above all else, there is a movement afoot that encourages us to slow down and to shop locally and mindfully for food.
The Slow Food is built upon the notion that local, organic and sustainably produced foods are healthier for our bodies and our environment than are imported, heavily processed foods. It encourages people to shop at their local farmer’s markets for fresh produce, meats, fish and dairy products. Many restaurants around the country have adopted a slow food philosophy and emphasize regional cuisine and seasonal foods on their menus.
The Slow Foods movement, which started in Italy in 1986, was in direct defiance of fast food. Carlo Petrini and other likeminded individuals formed a group called Arcigola to protest the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant near the Spanish steps in Rome. The Slow Food Movement now has expanded to include more than 83,000 members in 122 countries.
“Slow Food is an idea, a way of living and a way of eating,” according to Slow Food USA, whose Web site is
www.slowfoodusa.org. “It is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.”
The philosophy underlying the Slow Food movement isn’t new. In generations past, before we had the ability to transport foods across long distances and the technology necessary to process foods, most people ate what was available to them locally. Often, their meals were comprised of vegetables they had grown themselves and meat from the local farm. Slow Food is a return to that historical way of eating.
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