Slow Food USA - Health Risks and Environmental Issues - nonprofit organization preserves social and environmental traditions of dining

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Feb-March, 2002 by Rose Marie Williams

While attending the Second World Conference on Breast Cancer in Canada July 1999, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jennie Burke from Australia who recognized the value of proper digestion in maintaining good health. In one of our discussions she said that what a person ate was less important than their state of being during the eating process. A calm demeanor would have a positive effect on digestion and assimilation, while stress or anxiety would have a negative impact.

The conversation brought to mind the unhurried style of eating associated with the Mediterranean countries, where the mid-day meal is often the major event of the day. Stores and businesses close and school children return home to share in the leisurely repast with family members sitting around the table.

This is in stark contrast to the fast-paced, eat-on-the-run lifestyle of the average American. Fast food franchises are present on every Main Street in every town in the USA, and are rapidly spreading to other countries.

The last straw for Italian activist, Carlo Petrini, was the opening of a McDonald's at the foot of the historic Spanish Steps in Rome. Pre-frozen, mass produced, one-taste-suits- all meals cooked in less than three minutes is antithesis to how Mediterranean cultures think and feel about food and the ritual of eating. The Slow Food movement emerged as a backlash to fast food.

Started in Italy in 1986, Slow Food, a consumer operation, now boasts more than 60,000 members worldwide. The Slow Food philosophy is to promote great tasting food made locally by artisans, and then shared in "convivia" by others who value flavor, quality, freshness and taste over speed.

In the country that invented fast food, Slow Food USA, a nonprofit organization, has a mission to support, celebrate, and safeguard the food traditions and heritage of North America. Slow Food USA recognizes the importance of enjoying wholesome food as essential to the pursuit of happiness. As an educational organization it is dedicated to stewardship of the land and ecologically sound food production; to the revival of the kitchen and the table as centers of pleasure, culture, and community; to the invigoration and proliferation of regional, seasonal culinary traditions; and to living a slower and more harmonious rhythm of life. Chapters are opening up in many states.

At the foundation of Slow Food is the Convivia, a vehicle to promote and safeguard the typical food, beverage, and specialties of a given region, and to make them known throughout the Slow Food Movement. It is the grassroots connection between the artisan, food or beverage, and the international network which includes the journal, SLOW, and various newsletters.

The Convivia encourages the convivial uniting of people in a given area who are committed to saving their local gastronomic heritage, learning about others, and defending the quiet material pleasures which oppose the spreading culture of "life in the fast lane." It allows for the development of new relationships with people in countries throughout the world who share an interest in alimentary culture and the philosophy of a slower more enjoyable pace to life.

Slow Food strives to protect gastronomic products threatened by industrial standardization, hyper hygienist legislation, the rules of the large-scale retail trade and the deterioration of the environment heightened by agricultural production for the fast food market.

In 2000 the "Slow Food Award for Defense of Biodiversity" was established to raise awareness about research, marketing, popularizing, and documentation that benefit biodiversity in the industry of agriculture. All those involved with helping preserve a country's gastronomic culture and conserving the global ecological balance are ideal candidates for the award. They may be researchers, farmers, teachers, or entrepreneurs.

Five special award winners were selected by 560 jurors from 80 countries. Vandana Shiva, the internationally known scientist from India was among the jurors. Winners in 2001 included: 1) The Amal Cooperative of Berber Women of Morocco, producers of argan oil (made from the fruit of a tree species that is intensively harvested for lumber) who also work to counteract the desertification of the region through deforestation; 2) India's Bija Devi, who has promoted organic agriculture by cataloguing the seeds at risk of disappearing in her area; 3) Dona Sebastiana Juarez Broca from Mexico, who produces chocolate using traditional methods employing village women and encouraging the expansion of biological and economically compatible cultivation; 4) Thierno Maadjou Bah and Mouctar Sow from Guinea, one of the world's poorest countries, who oppose the invasion of industrial products and protect the nere tree that produces the "soumbara" condiment used by the local Peul people; 5) The Portuguese Necton society that has saved the salt pans of the Ria Formosa National Park and is trying to rebuild the fabric of the economy that had been lost through the abandonment of this artisan industry.