What is Slow Food?

Slow Food is an eco-gastronomic movement that encourages people to reclaim the pleasures of the table with friends and family. Eating becomes a moment of sharing and discovery. Everyone is invited to revive traditions or to explore new culinary cultures while being environmentally conscious. And above all, we have to get our hands dirty. Let's go! To your pots and pans...

In reaction to the frenzy of speed that has gripped the culture of post-industrial societies and the concept of fast food that standardizes tastes, the Slow Food movement poses as a dissident. It helps the distracted consumer to become an informed gastronome.

The short story

"It is useless to force the rhythms of our existence. The art of living consists in learning how to dedicate time to each thing. "

Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food

In 1986, the McDonald's restaurant chain was about to set up a branch in the splendid Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna), a historic site in Rome. Faced with what they considered to be an unacceptable advance of junk food in Italy, the food writer Carlo Petrini and his colleagues from the Italian gastronomic society Arcigola laid the foundations of the Slow Food movement. With humor and intelligence, they convinced a group of Italian artists and intellectuals to join their project. After all, Italy is the cradle of great European cuisine. French cuisine even owes it its letters of nobility.

Carlo Petrini first developed the Slow Food concept as a joke, a philosophical wink to Italian foodies. The idea caught on so well that in 1989 Slow Food became an international non-profit organization. The launch took place at the Opéra Comique in Paris with the adoption of the Slow Food Manifesto for Taste and Biodiversity, presented by Carlo Petrini1.

The values of Slow Food


"The variety we see when we enter a supermarket is only apparent because often the components of entire sectors are the same. The differences are given in the manufacturing process or by variations in the addition of flavoring substances and colorants. "1

Carlo Petrini


To awaken the public's taste for quality food, to explain the origins of food and the socio-historical conditions of its production, to make people discover producers from here and elsewhere, these are some of the objectives of the Slow Food movement.

The movement's supporters want to ensure that there will always be a place for artisanal foods. They believe that humanity's food heritage and the environment are endangered by the agri-food industry, which offers all the products to quickly satisfy our appetite.

They also believe that the solution to the problems of undernourishment in the South and malnutrition in the North lies in a better knowledge of the diversity of food cultures and in the reappropriation of the sense of sharing.

To achieve these goals, the creators of Slow Food believe that we must slow down the pace: take the time to choose our food well, to know it, to cook it properly, and to enjoy it in good company. Hence the symbol of slowness, the snail, which also evokes the prudence and wisdom of the philosopher, as well as the solemnity and moderation of the wise and benevolent host.

What is Slow Food? In addition to holding convivial activities to educate people about taste and discover forgotten or endangered local flavors, Slow Food encourages the reappropriation of artisanal know-how in the field of food that is being forgotten under the pressure of unbridled productivity.

An international movement


Today, the movement has about 82,000 members in about 50 countries. Italy, with its 35,000 members, is still the epicenter of the phenomenon. Slow Food International's headquarters are in the heart of the Italian Piedmont, in the town of Bra.

A decentralized movement


Members are divided into local units, each constituting a condotte in Italy or a convivium elsewhere in the world. There are about 1,000 of them. The word convivium means "living together" and is the source of the French word "convivialité". It is reminiscent of the ritual of the meal that brings people together around the table to nourish life, both of the soul and the body.

Each convivium organizes its own activities: meals, tastings, visits to farms or food artisans, conferences, taste training workshops, etc.

University of Gastronomic Sciences


Slow Food founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences3 in Bra in January 2003, an institution of higher learning recognized by the Italian Ministry of Education and the European Union. This training and research center aims to renew farming methods, protect biodiversity and maintain a link between gastronomy and agricultural sciences. It does not teach cooking per se, but rather the theoretical and practical aspects of gastronomy through sociology, anthropology, economics, ecology, eco-agronomy, politics, etc.

Taste Fair


In addition, Slow Food holds public events to promote good food and cooking, such as the famous Salone Internazionale del Gusto (International Taste Fair) in Turin, Italy2 . This event, held every two years, allows people to discover and taste culinary specialties from all over the world, to meet great chefs who agree to share some of their secrets, to participate in taste workshops, etc.

Books


Slow Food also publishes various gastronomic works, including the Slow magazine, published four times a year in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. It is a publication that deals with the anthropology and geography of food. It is distributed free of charge to members of all the international units of the movement.

Socio-economic actions


Through various programs, the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity aims to organize and finance activities that safeguard the diversity of the world's food heritage and rich culinary traditions.

Thus, the Ark of Taste is an initiative of the movement aiming to list and protect varieties of food plants or livestock threatened with extinction by the standardization of industrial agricultural production. By registering a food in the Ark of Taste, you are in a way bringing it aboard a virtual Noah's Ark that can protect it from the predicted deluge.

Since 2000, the Slow Food Awards for the Safeguarding of Biodiversity have recognized the efforts of individuals or groups who, through their research, production, marketing, or communication activities, help to safeguard biodiversity in the agri-food sector. The winners receive a cash prize and benefit from the media exposure that Slow Food gives them in its publications, press releases, and during public events such as the Salone del Gusto.

Past winners include a group of Native Americans in Minnesota, USA, who produce wild rice, a plant indigenous to that region. These indigenous people convinced the geneticists at a university in their state to refrain from patenting any new wild rice varieties resulting from their genetic research. Also, they have ensured that no GMO varieties of this plant will be planted in the region in order to preserve the genetic integrity of the traditional varieties.

In addition, the international Slow Food movement has demonstrated its solidarity with the world's poorest people by providing financial support for various projects: recovering farmland and improving production in a rural community in Nicaragua, taking charge of the kitchen of an Amerindian hospital in Brazil, funding emergency food programs mainly for children in Bosnia, rebuilding a small cheese factory destroyed by an earthquake in Italy, etc.