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Unit 54

Slow Food Movement

The International Slow Food Movement was founded in 1986 by leftist journalist Carlo Petrini in a determined effort to wage intellectual war on the homogenization of food around the world. Spurred by the opening of Italy's first McDonald's in Rome, Carlo started the organization determined to save regional foods and small producers from extinction and to revive taste and the senses.

The backbone of the non-profit organization are groups of people who meet informally to share and promote local small producers, to learn about culinary traditions and cultures, and to arrange tastings. An important aspect of Slow Food was introduced to identify and publicize endangered foods such as tuna roe and Moselle red peaches, and to encourage people to seek them out, with the theory that if the market demands, supply will increase. Another important component of Slow Food is the commitment to teach children about taste and food and to develop their senses and their appreciation of food and the pleasures of the table.

Slow Food Festivals are broad-reaching, not only acknowledging and encouraging individual artisans, but also celebrating the role of food throughout every aspect of culture. Workshops where tastes are explored in their cultural context are an important component of the International Slow Food Movement. For instance, the Germany's Festival had 30 different ones, each about an hour and half long. They sell out quickly too. A speaker at a head table discoursed on the history of dishes people were eating, and the relationship of food, work, and eating to the life and culture of the German province of Schleswig Holstein.

In an attempt to popularize the Slow Food Movement in the United States, Carlo Petrini made a 10-day trip across the United States, ending up as the honorary guest at the Berkeley meeting, slow, 10-course dinner celebrating simply prepared, regional products. Guests sampled appetizers of ferns, sipped wines and chatted, before sitting down to salmon with lime oil, followed by white asparagus in herbs. This dish was preceded by a dining-room demonstration of chef Jean-Pierre Moulle showing how to clean the fish without cutting it open, a performance cheered by the group, a collection of over 50 enthusiasts seated at long tables.

To defend biodiversity we have to defend small producers. The Slow Food Movement is different from ecological movements and from gastronomy movements. Gastronomical movements don't defend the small producers and their products, and ecological movements fight the battles, but can't cook. Slow Food Movement has both at the same time.

The Slow Food Movement has been likened to Don Quixote fighting the windmills, but if the recent enthusiasm for this complex organization with its ecological and gastronomical goals and sense of fun is any indication, the quixotic figure of Carlo Petrini may be triumphant.