what is slow food?
Slow food, is all about local and traditional foods made to be savoured and honoured. This is the short simplified take.
It’s also a term used to promote an international movement against the mass production of the fast food industry. The slow food movement promotes healthy, locally-sourced food and regional traditions to combat the mindless and hurried consumption of food in the modern day. It is the opposite of globalization. It promotes local farmers, sustainable agriculture, heritage and provenance. It promotes honesty & quality starting from the soil up.
Is the slow food movement important?
Lets pause and ponder: were your most, memorable, meals those of your grandma’s? she picked lemons from the garden and went to the local fruit & veg market to buy whats seasonally available. Full of flavour watermelon? bought by that guy parked by the side of the road, who grew them on his little plot. Bursting flavour purple figs? handpicked by your colleague from his grandma’s back garden.
Remember tomatoes?- the smell and taste of local heirloom tomatoes, grown naturally in their real season- when was the last time you enjoyed one of those? unforgettable right?
And everyday here we are buying our nutrition from mass production sources eye catchingly displayed in hypermarkets. We compromise in the name of time and we mindlessly buy ready made salads.
The thing is we are not really supposed to try and remember what real food actually is. We should not need to distinguish between slow and fast, but we do -we have agreed to this distinction, normalised it and our buying habits support it.
Is slow food important?
Depends. If you truly care about your health, animal welfare or small farmers support, our tradition, our heritage, sustainability .. [the list is long], yes it is important. We can also keep it simple - dont you just love how it feels to have real and honest food? Remember?
Angle it in any way that works for you, pick a subject and assign it importance. The world of slow food deserves more people in its embrace.
Read more here: https://www.slowfood.com/
