Slow Food Movement

There is an excellent book written by Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming that talks about local communities response to the systemic problems we are facing. The focus of the book is on what is going right in the world and how people are using imagination and conviction to perform daily miracles which are redefining our relationship with the environment and with one another.

In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken talks about the Slow Food movement.

The Slow Food (alimento lento) movement "... began as a protest against the opening of a McDonalds in Rome's PIazza di Spagna. [Slow Food] has bloomed into a booming international movement that defends small farmers, local markets, agricultural diversity,… the environment, human dignity, small business and human health."

"... we have forgotten the simple satisfaction of eating, that sharing food is communion with friends and the earth, and that hosting is more 'art than philanthropy'."

"Slow Food supports the re-creation of networks of traditional food producers with customers so that both may thrive. It is about conserving the heritage of the exquisite variety of tastes humankind has created, which means organizing farmer's markets and ensuring both that varieties of fruits and vegetables and rare breeds of animals do not become extinct, and that the people who are artisans of food are supported and can pass on their craft to future generations."

"...When we lose a flavor, we lose a recipe, and when a recipe is lost, the use of a natural food is lost and when the use of a food is lost, the cultivation and source of that food is lost, ... and when local food production is lost, people are forced to become consumers of food produced far away by multi-national companies."

“… food lovers who are not environmentalists are naïve, and an ecologist who does not take time to savor his food and culture leads a deprived and sad life.”

"Slow movements are not anti-globalization, they are pro-localization. Savoring something - a spice, a radish, a piece of cheese - brings us back home to the world in which we walk and breathe. It slows us down. Taste is social. We come together, sit and talk together around food... It is how we share being alive."