The Slow Food Movement and Why It Matters

In the 21st century, fast-food is more important than ever before. More meals are eaten on the go than at the dinner table. Quite often, a meal at McDonald’s costs lesser than home-cooked food.

While fast-food is a cheap and convenient option, it comes at a cost. Fast-food restaurants focus on quantity more than quality. Fast-food chains have long been accused of using harmful ingredients, engaging in animal cruelty, worker exploitation, and contributing to the obesity epidemic. Research indicates that eating fast food may kill more people than smoking cigarettes (Murray, 2013).

Fast food also erodes the richness and variety of local cuisines and traditions. Fast food critics accuse it of “dumbing down” the significance of a meal.

The History of Slow Food

In many countries, food is an emotional, sensory experience. A region’s local cuisine is a marker of its traditions, culture and community. This is acutely felt in Italy, a country with a storied culinary history. Italians take great pride in the freshness of their produce and the quality of their food. A meal isn’t just a way to satisfy your hunger, but a rich, sensory and emotional experience.

In 1986, McDonald’s decided to open a branch along the Spanish Steps in Rome- a historical and culturally important location.

For many Italians, like Carlo Petrini, this was a step too far. The opening of a fast-food restaurant represented an attack on their principles, their communities and their beliefs in how food must be prepared and consumed. A former activist turned food journalist, Petrini decided to do something about it.

He successfully called on to the community, asking them to join him in opposing McDonald’s. In 1989, the Slow Food manifesto was officially signed in Paris. Thus began the Slow Food movement.

What is the Slow Food Movement?

The Slow Food movement seeks to inform and educate the public about local and traditional foods, while protecting agricultural and culinary heritage (Jung et al., 2014). Its parent organization, Slow Food International, is a non-profit eco-gastronomic organization with a network of over 100,000 members in 153 countries. According to Germov, Williams and Freij (2010) the main themes of the slow-food movement include

• Conviviality: Good food is a pleasurable social experience, best enjoyed in a community

• Localism: Producing food locally has social, health, and environmental benefits while guaranteeing higher quality and shortening supply chains

• Romanticism: Romanticizing an idyllic, rural lifestyle as the antidote to the time-starved nature of urban life

Where fast-food focuses on quantity, uniformity in taste and large-scale production, slow food focuses on quality, unique flavors and more sustainable economic practices.

The Principles of Slow Food

The Slow Food movement believes that all food must have three essential qualities. It must be good, clean and fair.

Good Food

The shift from community-based, small-scale food production to export-oriented, mono-cultural food production has eroded culinary traditions around the world. This shift has made food a less enjoyable experience, which has made “good food” experiences harder to find.

Two factors are crucial to a “good” food experience, which are

• Taste- Taste is linked to our personal perceptions of what makes good food

• Knowledge- What we know about food is linked to our environment, culture and its culinary history

According to the Slow Food movement, good food is the result of raw fresh materials and sustainable production methods. The principle of “good food” refers to a fresh, healthy and flavorful diet that is a part of the local culture, which results in a pleasurable culinary experience.

Clean Food

A focus on quantity over quality can compromise on food safety and cleanliness. “Clean food”, according to the Slow Food movement refers to food production that is aligned to the following principles

• Food production must follow sustainable, organic farming practices

• Does not pollute water and land resources

• Does not use costly, foreign or non-renewable resources

• Protects ecosystems and biodiversity

• Protects the health of both producers and consumers

While good food focuses on the culinary experience, clean food focuses on the practices that go behind producing it. Clean food focuses on the agricultural methods that are used, the areas of production, the quantities produced, and the supply-chains that are used in producing high-quality food.

Fair Food

The final pre-requisite for high-quality food is fairness. The Slow Food movement takes issue with the fact that the people who produce food often have difficulties meeting their needs. The concept of fairness extends, but isn’t limited to

• Respect for workers and their skills

• Setting fair, equitable prices for farmers’ produce

• Recognizing the investment and effort that goes into farming

• Shorter, more practical food supply chains

The Slow Food movement recognizes that when food products are priced too low, farmers aren’t being paid a fair price. By advocating higher prices, the movement wants to ensure that nobody in the supply chain gets the short end of the stick.

The Goals of the Slow Food Movement

Through the changes it envisions, the Slow Food movement tries to create a food system that is more sustainable, both for the planet and food producers. It plans to do so by implementing the following changes

• Conserving and promoting biodiversity

• Adopting sustainable production methods

• Promoting energy efficient systems

• Minimizing food waste

• Creating shorter supply chains

• Promoting a food consumption model where people are co-producers, not consumers

• Protecting traditional knowledge

The Slow Food Movement and Sustainability

The Slow Food movement doesn’t see sustainability as a one-dimensional topic. The movement sees itself as a point of intersection for many of the troubles and problems we have as a planet. The Slow Food movement aims to create a food system that adheres to the following tenets.

Environmentally Sustainable

The ideal food system uses high-quality, renewable natural resources over time. Such a food system preserves the delicate biodiversity of ecosystems and guarantees their integrity.

Economically Sustainable

The ideal food system is a source of reliable, long-term income and provides a healthy source of competition. Such a system creates high-quality produce and allows farmers to set competitive prices that ensures they are paid adequately for their effort.

Socio-culturally Sustainable

The ideal food system ensures access to fundamental rights (safety, health, etc.) and conditions of well-being (education, social relations etc.) for all stakeholders in the food production process.

The Slow Food movement believes that all three principles are strongly connected and are best understood through an inclusive, holistic approach.

Slow Food: Why It Matters

The Slow Food movement is a reaction to the harmful, unsustainable methods of food production in the 21st century. While the name of the movement implies “slowness”, it refers to a more thoughtful, intentional way of creating, distributing and consuming food.

Our planet is in danger, and many of the reasons why can be traced to apathy and thoughtlessness. It is these traits that the Slow Food movement tries to challenge. At its essence, it wants us to slow down, to appreciate the effort that goes into producing high-quality food.

The outlook for our planet remains bleak, but ultimately, the Slow Food movement is about hope. Food is a basic need that connects all life on earth. A more sustainable, intentional way of sourcing that food is perhaps a great way to begin tackling the many challenges that we face as a planet.

References

Germov, J., Williams, L., & Freij, M. (2010, October 11). Portrayal of the Slow Food movement in the Australian print media. Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783310369021

H. Jung, T., M. Ineson, E., & Miller, A. (2014). The Slow Food Movement and sustainable tourism development: a case study of Mold, Wales. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 8(4), 432–445. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijcthr-01-2014-0001

Murray, C. J. L. (2013). The State of US Health, 1990-2010. JAMA, 310(6), 591. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.13805

Slow Food’s Contribution to the Debate on the Sustainability of the Food System. (2013). Retrieved from https://www.slowfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ING-food-sust.pdf