Slow food is an easy concept. It can be described in three words: Good, clean, and fair.
The food must taste good (otherwise the slow movement would be cut abruptly short), be produced in a clean manner (think organic vs. chemical input, food miles, water quality), and the price must be fair to both producer and consumer (ideally with few hands in between grower and eater).
But for far too many, slow food is a difficult concept. This is because the average urbanite has no idea how to raise a pig, harvest wheat, or store the summer’s bounty for winter use. Heck, the average urbanite doesn’t even know someone who knows how to do these things anymore.
In just six decades, western culture has moved far away from our food sources. In doing so we have given control of our food to large corporations, whose mandate is not to feed people, but to maximize profits. This has led to non-labelled experimentations with the foods we find on the shelves of our markets, rampant use of genetically-modified foods and intensively-raised livestock with dependency on “medicated feed.”
Tragically, this corporate approach to food has also displaced tens of thousands of farmers in developing countries from the land that has been in their families for generations.
The need to rethink, revitalize and reinvent our food systems has never been more urgent than it is right now.
Slow food is about regaining control of our food systems by once again growing (or purchasing) good, clean, fair foods. Foods grown with the intention of feeding people, not making profits.
Slow Food International now has more than 85,000 active members and supporters in more than 130 countries. Eat slow. It tastes better.
