Slow Food

We all go to the same place, so let us go there slowly.

—Carlo Petrini, Founder of Slow Food, as quoted in Fast Company

Remember the days before the dot.com explosion, before Golden Arches rose from the Great Plains, before the Age of Information, when the only commodity that wasn't in short supply in America was time? Time to relax and reflect, time to cook well, eat well, and live the life of sustainable hedonism. Today we pound down our Big Mac and fries as we check our e-mail on our collective Palm Pilots, at the expense of true nourishment for our bodies and souls.

"Enough!" says Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food International, a movement that encourages us to turn down the volume, unplug the answering machine, and enjoy life to its fullest. Away with nutraceutical soft drinks and breakfast cereals made from refined sugar and shaped liked clowns. Bring back the pleasure of the palate, and return the humanity to food. More than 60,000 members worldwide now belong to the Slow Food movement, which believes that the slow shall inherit the earth.

Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food is an anthology for cooks, gourmets, and anyone who is passionate about food and its impact on our culture. Drawn from five years of the quarterly journal Slow (only recently available in America), this book includes more than 100 articles covering eclectic topics from "Falafel" to "Fat City." From the market at Ulan Bator in Mongolia to Slow Food Down Under, this book offers an armchair tour of the exotic and bizarre. You'll pass through Vietnam's Snake Tavern, enjoy the Post-Industrial Pint of Beer, and learn why the lascivious villain in Indian cinema always eats Tandoori Chicken. The articles are contributed by some of the world's top food writers.

Slow Food is moving fast in North America, with more than 5,000 members, loosely organized into 55 "Convivia," from Montreal to San Francisco, benefiting from enormous free publicity. Slow Food offers a clear alternative to the "fast food nation" (the title of Eric Schlosser's great book on the horrors of the fast food biz). This is a perfect follow-up to Joan Dye Gussow's This Organic Life, and is proof positive that he or she who lives slow, lives best.

About the Authors

Carlo Petrini

Carlo Petrini is the founder of the international Slow Food movement, which was established in 1986 and now has more than 70,000 members in 45 countries around the world. Slow Food is committed to celebrating and preserving biological and regional diversity in food, and to promoting taste education, as well as supporting local agriculture and economies in our increasingly homogenous world. ...

View Carlo's full profile page >

Slow Food Editore

Slow Food Editore was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. It now has more than 80,000 members in 120 countries around the world. ...

View Slow Food Editore's full profile page >

Ben Watson

Ben Watson is the longtime Senior Editor for Chelsea Green Publishing and a freelance author and journalist. His books include The Slow Food Guide to New York City (with Patrick Martins and Slow Food USA), Cider, Hard and Sweet, and Taylor's Guide to Heirloom Vegetables.

A local and national food activist and consultant, Watson is co-leader of the Slow Food Monadnock convivium based in western New Hampshire, and is a member of Slow Food USA's national Ark & Presidia committee, which is charged with identifying, preserving, and promoting rare animal breeds and plant varieties and supporting local farmers and ...

View Ben's full profile page >