Slow Food

A stylized logo of the Slow food movement, on a restaurant in Santorini

Slow Food is an idea that was opposed to fast food. Eating should be a pleasurable experience. That's why slow food focuses on ingredients that are from the region. These fresh ingredients are used to prepare a meal. This is in contrast to fast food which uses many standardized pre-processed ingredients. Carlo Petrini founded the movement in 1986. Even though the movement started in Italy, it soon spread to other countries.

Aims

Slow food therefore has the following aims:

• Eating is about pleasure. Everyone has a right to it
• Quality needs time
• Quallity should respect ecology. Locally-produced fresh ingredients are preferable. The presentation of the meal should be estethically pleasing.
• Everyone has a different taste; discussions about taste are natural

In 2006, Petrini gave the following definition: Buono, pulito e giusto (good, clean, and fair) - If one of the three is missing, we are no longer talking about Slow Food.

Criticism

Slow Food's aims have been compared to the Arts and Crafts movement's response to 19th-century industrialisation.

Without changing the working day of the masses, the preparation of slow food can be a burden to whoever prepares food. People with more money can afford the time and expense of developing "taste", "knowledge", and "discernment". Slow Food's stated aim of preserving itself from the "contagion of the multitude" can be seen as elitist by those that consume fast food or are not part of the movement. In 1989, Petrini visited Venezuela and began to recognize the socioeconomic barriers that many faced with regard to the slow food movement. To address this, he adjusted the slow food agenda to include an alternative food approach that favored healthy, local, community-based food consumption and production. While this made the slow food movement more accessible for many, it did not eliminate all of the socioeconomic barriers faced by the movement.

Slow Food Media

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  Slow Food Germany is among the organisers of the yearly demonstrations under the banner We are fed up! in Berlin.