Greece: The Slow Foods Movement

| by G. Papas | March 06, 2008
One thing people seem to like about MacDonald's is knowing exactly what will be served. Every paper wrapped cheeseburger is exactly the same as any other cheeseburger you will get anywhere in the world. We fail to consider what goes into creating the product.
Where was the beef grown, how was it slaughtered?
What about the French fries?
Did you know corporate farms have learned to create an exact potato for these fries, and sell in bulk to the corporation? The potato you eat in Michigan came from the same farm as the fries you get in Alabama or Utah or Maine. Think about the gasoline wasted to provide us with uniform fries. Consider wear and tear on the roads.
Providing potatoes for a chain of fast food restaurants means intensive monocropping, which necessarily attracts specific pests, which also depletes the soils meaning fertilizers and pesticides must be used. Non-organic pesticides and fertilizers are petroleum based. So, how much petroleum do we need to provide the security of knowing every food at every MacDonald's will conform?
One thing that people seem to dislike about MacDonald's is knowing exactly what will be served. No matter where you eat, you will find the exact same flavor, texture, color, packaging. Local flavor is disappearing into bland sameness.
These thoughts are some of the basis of the Slow Foods Movement. Slow Foods became a movement, then an organization in 1989, created to counteract fast food and fast life, and the disappearance of local food traditions. Believing that everyone has a right to gustatory pleasure, there is necessarily the corresponding responsibility of protecting the foods and traditions that make this pleasure possible. Slow foods recognizes the strong connection between plate and planet.
Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. The food people eat should taste good, be produced in a clean way that does no harm to environment, and producers should receive fair compensation for their work. Slow Foods supports biodiversity - striving to preserve traditional grains, vegetables, fruits, livestock varieties, educates palates - helping people rediscover the joy of eating, and connects food producers with consumers. People begin to care where their food comes from, and how it is made.
What follows is the Slow Foods Manifesto:
Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods. To be worthy of the name, Homo sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction. A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.
May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency. Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.
Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food. In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer. That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it. And what better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects?
Slow Food guarantees a better future. Slow Food is an idea that needs plenty of qualified supporters who can help turn this (slow) motion into an international movement, with the little snail as its symbol.

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