Many Tastes Are Better Than One (Slow Food Movement)

Many Tastes are better than one

When you order a hamburger, French fries and cola from a fast food restaurant, here's what you're likely to get: A paper cup full of carbonated water, ice, sugar, corn syrup, food coloring, and "natural flavor." Frozen French fries that were flavored with chemical additives, reheated in hydrogenated vegetable oil, salted, then placed under a heat lamp. A thin, frozen hamburger patty-containing meat from hundreds of different cattle, raised in as many as five different countries, ground together in gigantic vatsÐ'... (Kummer)

Now, let's feed that to our children, tomorrow's leaders. And people wonder why the slow food movement is growing every single day.

When the smell of the French fry wafted its way through the Piazza di Spagna, one of Rome's most revered courtyards, Carlo Petrini decided that fast food had gone way too far. So in 1986 Petrini along with a small group of food lovers, founded an association called Slow Food in a small town in the wine country of Italy. This organization dedicates itself to the protection of traditional foods and agricultural biodiversity. Petrini emphasizes all the parameters- commercial, industrial, agricultural and ecological. This constitutes the real strength of the slow food movement. It is "a philosophy, movement and organization devoted to a less hurried pace of life and the true tastes, aromas and diversity of good food" (Inouye). Petrini sees two main reasons for the rapid growth of this movement- "love of good food and fear of health damage from industrial meals" (Inouye). The slow food movement connects taste and ethics. It "combines two souls: the one of the green with the one of the gourmet to form an eco-gastronomic association" (Inouye). It enhances the sensorial aspect of food and the enjoyment of eating the food. Then it educates the consumers on how to really appreciate food quality and teaches how essential it is to protect biodiversity. Only half of the slow food movement is pleasure driven, the educational component is equally important. The slow food movement shows us that sustainable living doesn't mean settling for bland tasteless food. (Inouye)

The slow food movement promotes the enjoyment of wholesome food as an essential part of creating and having a happy and healthy life. It is dedicated to achieving a better understanding and respect for where food comes from and who makes that possible. It develops an appreciation for unprocessed foods that are free of chemicals and pesticides and it promotes foods that use natural growing techniques and cross breeding, not genetic modification. It also celebrates traditional foods and discovers the pleasures of dining by slowing it down. (Schepers)

The slow food movement is opposed to the fast-food, freeze and heat monoculture that is associated with franchise food outlets and the monstrous growth of supermarkets. According to Petrini, "A hundred years ago people ate between twenty and one hundred and twenty different species of food. Now our diet is made up of at most ten or twelve species" (New Internationalists). The movement recently received a boost because of the food safety scandals in Europe and the United States. Europe has had to deal with the plagues of mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease while the United States deals with multitudes of outbreaks of E. coli. The movement embraces organic methods of agriculture to help produce safer food even if it does cost a little more. This is not just a gastronomical organization but this is an organization that deals with the worlds hunger and environmental problems without giving up the right to pleasure. I am talking about not just saving endangered species but actually saving endangered ways of life that revolve around our stomachs, what we put in them and how it was prepared. Benjamin Chadwick states that "For slow food, it's not just animals and plants that are threatened, but also recipes, harvesting methods and production techniques" Patrick Martins follows that up with "Slow food is an international movement dedicated to saving the regional cuisines and products of the worldÐ'... it could be a style of cookingÐ'...or rare types of potatoes or peachesÐ'...anything that's fallen by the wayside due to our industrial food culture" (Chadwick).

If we miss the link between food and nature, we will have missed the problem all together. We are in danger of losing variety in our food. The Sun Crest peach is a soft peach that bruises easily, but is extravagantly juicy and has a perfect balance of acids and sugars. Since it bruises easily it is unattractive to supermarkets that prefer produce that travels well. So the Sun crest peach is only grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California and picked only in midsummer and sold at roadside stands. The same is the case for the Limbertwig apple; the southern field pea and the red abalone all came close to extinction. These are among some the American products that have been selected for the endangered species list of edibles established by Slow Food. (Orecklin)

Eric Schlosser writes, "The glory days of the major chains seem to be over. Smaller regional restaurant companies are the ones now enjoying rapid growth in the United States" (Schepers). Farmer's markets have risen in popularity, increasing 63% between 1994 and 2000. People who shop at farmer's markets appreciate the connection between the land and our food. They reap the benefits of unadulterated and unprocessed food. Realistically though, we live in a consumer society with huge high powered advertising machines that manipulate the public into wanting things that really aren't needed. The concept of mass produced food really had good intentions. The intentions were to get more affordable food to the greatest number of people. No one thought to look at what this might do to the environment. Quinncorr states that "a peach grown by a small scale suburban farmer may be a bit more expensive, but damn, it tastes like a peach, and when you buy it you're keeping that farmer in business and fighting urban sprawl" (Chadwick).

The slow food movement began as a protest against the global proliferation of McDonald's. Maurice Holt calls "for a similar backlash against today's Ð''hamburger' approach toward education, which emphasizes uniformity, predictability and measurability of processes and results" (Holt). Parents are encouraged to focus on achievement, not self-realization. The current Administration of George Bush has pushed the idea of universal standards and yearly tests. This is a requirement that undermines the states and is completely unworkable.