Slow Food aims to counter the fast life created by industrialization, which has led to the disappearance of unique local culinary traditions and environmental deprivation. Its primary missions include producing good, clean, and fair food, preserving biodiversity, and connecting producers and co-producers. The organization has local chapters around the world and organizes tastings to educate consumers about the difference between conventionally produced and artisanal food. Slow Food opposes fast food and conventional agriculture and hopes to reform the way we live.
Slow Food is an international organization founded in 1989 by Carlo Petrini. While many people believe it was founded to oppose fast food, the goals of the organization are actually very different, even if the members oppose fast food in principle. The goal is to counter the fast life, a state created through rapid industrialization. The fast life has led to the disappearance of thousands of unique local culinary traditions and food varieties because industrialized food is easy to package and sell. The fast living has also led to extreme environmental deprivation, and Slow Food aims to counter the fast living, starting at the table, but eventually in other playing fields as well.
There are several primary missions for Slow Food. The first is to produce food that is good, clean and fair, meaning that it tastes superb, is sustainably managed and healthy, and harvested under good working conditions. Biodiversity is also a big part of the mission, which created the Ark of Taste in an effort to save unique varieties of foods ranging from traditional apples to unique breeds of pigs. The organization also works to connect producers and co-producers. The term “co-producer” is a Slow Food invention; if people learn about the source of their food, are active in their communities, and connect with their food producers, they become co-producers, actively contributing to the process rather than being passive consumers.
To achieve its goals, the organization has hundreds of local chapters, or convivia, around the world. Regular meetings are held to discuss issues ranging from raw milk cheese to deforestation, and Slow Food also organizes a series of tasting parties to achieve another goal of the organization: taste education. During these tastings, guests can savor the flavors that the organization is working hard to save and can experience the difference between conventionally produced food and food from artisanal producers.
Naturally, fast food runs counter to Slow Food’s values, which include the protection of the unique culinary heritage and the environment. But most conventional agriculture is also contrary to this ethic, because it is highly mechanized and homogenous food, grown from seeds designed to function in a particular and predictable way, using pesticides and herbicides, and harvested by low-paid labor working in dangerous. The organization hopes to educate consumers, make them think about where their food comes from and ultimately reform the way we live, not just at the table, but in all of our actions.
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