Module IV Section E Slow Food – A Different Path
Section E: Slow Food – A Different Path
Projected outcomes:
Students will learn about the international Slow Food movement and will apply the ideas of slow food to their own lives and region.
Background /Lessons:
Introduction
What is Slow Food? It is an organization dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of regional, traditional foods. As the name suggests, the movement opposes a number of trends associated with commercial fast food.
Fast food tries to be the same everywhere. Slow food celebrates and emphasizes regional specialties and taste differences.
Fast food is anonymous. You usually don’t know the person who serves you, let alone who did the cooking or grew the ingredients. Although some fast food chains use real people’s names, you know nothing about those people or what, if anything, they have to do with the food. Slow food proudly proclaims the names and faces of the people involved: the farmers and processors and chefs.
Fast food is made from cheap ingredients. Slow food uses sustainably grown ingredients and tries to pay the people who made the food fairly.
Fast food is eaten fast – standing up, on the run, driving in the car. And you eat it while your attention is elsewhere – on the road or the TV or the football game. Slow food is savored. You take your time to eat it, you pay attention to the flavors and texture and presentation, and you think about how it got to you.
A world-wide movement
The official Slow Food movement was founded in Italy . In 1986, McDonalds opened a store in the Piazza Spagna in Rome, Italy . Carlo Petrini, an Italian journalist who specialized in foods and cultural heritage, founded the Slow Foods movement in response to this fast food invasion of a historic part of a city and country with a rich and proud culinary tradition. The ideas of the Slow Food movement resonated far beyond Italy. The organization now has chapters in more than 50 countries around the world, with more than 80,000 members (Slow Food International).
Unofficially, the ideas behind slow food have an even wider reach. Everywhere people cherish local food specialties, every time eaters connect with the people and places that made their food, and every time a cook chooses the work of home-made over the convenience of pre-processed, the values of slow food are in evidence.
Ties to sustainable agriculture
The Slow Food movement believes the quality of food has its origins in the way the food is grown, and that sustainable production makes for better food.
Slow Foods Are
- usually raised using organic and sustainable practices
- often made from rare varieties and breeds
- handled and processed in ways that respect both the earth and the people that brought them into being
Terms and projects
Convivia: The name for local chapters of the Slow Food movement. Like the word “convivial”, “convivia” comes from the Latin root words “with life” and implies both fellowship and feasting – an apt name for groups that focus on relishing food and tradition together.
The Ark of Taste: A program to document great traditional foods in danger of disappearing or being forgotten. Foods in the Ark can be crops, such as a variety of apple or a strain of wheat, or they can be processed products such as traditional cheeses or breads.
Activity 1: Nominate a local food specialty for the Ark of Taste
Presidia: Slow Food projects to preserve particular foods and support the people who make them, from the farmers to the artisans who make the final products.
Conclusion
Fast food is all around us. Obviously, it meets a demand, or it would not be so successful. But even as people make use of fast food in its many guises, many are beginning to wonder about how we can hold on to treasured regional specialties and the social connections that food can build. The Slow Food Movement tackles the concerns. But you don’t have to be a member of a convivium or trained chef or wealthy gourmet to enter into the spirit of slow food.
Activity 2: Take a small slow food bite
Activity 3: Let your imagination go wild
Further readings
Slow Food USA is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to land stewardship and ecologically sound food production; to supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America ; and to living a slower and more harmonious life.
Heritage Foods USA sells humanely, sustainably-raised meat products of heritage breeds of livestock that are endangered raised on independent small farms.
Local Harvest offers a definitive and reliable nationwide directory of CSAs, farmers markets, family farms, and other local food sources.
Food Print offers an introduction to the sustainable food movement and the issues surrounding it, plus resources for further investigation (the sections for “Eating Sustainability” and “Issues” are good places to start).
Career Pathway content standards
| Projected Outcome | National Agricultural Education Standards Performance Element or Performance Indicators |
Activity Number(s) (in this section) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define the international Slow Food movement. | — | E-2 |
| 2. Apply the ideas of slow food to their own lives and region. | — | E-2 |
| 3. Define the concept of endangered foods. | — | E-1 |
| 4. Research specialty varieties and foods from their own region. | FPP.03 Apply principles of science to the food products and processing industry. FPP.03.01 Apply principles of science to food processing to provide a safe, wholesome and nutritious food supply. |
E-1 |
| 5. Describe the origin and sustainability of their favorite foods. | FPP.03 Apply principles of science to the food products and processing industry. FPP.03.01 Apply principles of science to food processing to provide a safe, wholesome and nutritious food supply. |
E-3 |
| 6. Communicate key sustainable agriculture principles creatively and effectively. | PS.03 Propagate, culture and harvest plants. PS.03.04 Apply principles and practices of sustainable agriculture to plant production. |
E-3 |