SITE OF THE DAY: Slow Food

Slow Food. The antithesis of the horror that is fast food and industrialized food production. The mass-industrialization and commoditization of food as we know it in the post-WW2 era has been both meteoric in its rise and catastrophic on so many fronts. Industrialized farming/agriculture and food production has resulted in processed or fast food that is unhealthy and toxic to both humans and the environment, it has accelerated animal cruelty to depraved levels, and completely altered ecosystems and destroyed biodiversity in rural areas.

Furthermore, this industrialized food industry has disconnected many people worldwide from the reality of how food is actually grown and made, and created a health epidemic of food-related allergies, vitamin and mineral deficiency-related ailments and diseases, obesity, hypertension, cardiac disease, and ALL that goes with that, not to mention a host of other shocking and frankly unacceptable negative impacts.

Industrialized eating, as I call it, has also resulted in poorer standards of food (including even how most fruit and vegetables taste, if anyone has noticed?) and, increasingly, less people being able to appreciate what makes a good, healthy and tasty meal, let alone be able to make one...

I have been following the Slow Food movement for the last few years, and it's fantastic, important stuff. The more I read up on this amazing movement, the more it makes me passionate about how important good, wholesome, organic, traditional, locally produced food is. What makes me especially proud, in a vicarious sort of way, is that the Slow Food movement had its origins in the very region from which the paternal side of my Italian family originates, namely the Piedmont region in the northwest corner of Italy. It's a region that takes its food extremely seriously in a country that takes its food extremely seriously. I've been told that Piedmont possibly ranks alongside regions like Emilia-Romagna and Toscana as the best regions to eat the very best food Italy has to offer.

The founder and guru of the Slow Food movement is Carlo Petrini, an extremely charismatic and amiable man who's passion for good, wholesome, organic food is religious in its intensity. He's a terrific and passionate public speaker, making him a highly praised and respected speaker at many conferences and symposia on Slow Food, healthy eating, sustainable agriculture, organic food and farming, and so forth.

One simply cannot wish to improve the state of the environment or the quality of one's life, health and well being without taking a serious and even life-altering look at how food is grown, made and eaten. Hence the importance of Slow Food.

Please visit the Slow Food International site, at www.slowfood.com, if you are not already a Slow Food fan or convert - it's a great site with so much to read and learn about. And it just may change the very way in which you eat and view food.