It’s 6:00 and you’re finished with work for the day. Your children are whining and want dinner. You’re tired and don’t feel like thinking about food, so you pull into the drive-through of the closest fast food place and fork over cash in exchange for your dinner. Or you pick up the phone and order a large pizza to be delivered to your front door.
Does this sound familiar to you?
Every day across America, thousands of people make the same choice. They opt for convenience over nutrition, flavor, and cost.
There is another option, of course.
Slow food.
Slow food is good food. Slow food is real food. Slow food is healthy food. Slow food is less expensive than fast food.
The Slow Food movement began in Italy over 20 years ago as a reaction to the culinary horrors of fast food and has since spread to nearly all corners of the globe. The objectives of the Slow Food movement include, but are not limited to:
- educating consumers about the risks of fast food
- forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems.
- preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation
- educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms
- educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few varieties
- developing various political programs to preserve family farms
- lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering
- lobbying against the use of pesticides
- teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners
Slow Food is about bringing back traditions that sustained humans for centuries but that are now being lost to the conveniences of fast food.
What can you do?
The easiest thing is not to eat at McCrap or other purveyors of mass produced food.
Other easy peasy things include:
- cook — preferably from raw ingredients and not pre-packaged convenience foods
- grow herbs in your kitchen window
- if you’re feeling more ambitious, plant a garden
- buy produce from your local farmers’ market and/or from a local store that sell foods produced by local farms, bakeries, etc.
Recycla understands that weeknights can be hard, especially for working parents, and some of these options may not work for everyone. She suggests that you try just one new thing, such as making a pizza instead of having one delivered. If making dough is too much effort, buy the dough from a local bakery or a premade crust at the store and add on your favorite toppings. During the weekend, plan out your meals and go to the store to buy the food supplies you’ll need. You could even cook larger quantities of food and then freeze everything into smaller portions. Every step you take is a positive one.
For more information, see Slow Food and Slow Food USA.
Photos, top to bottom: A farmers’ market in Los Angeles, freshly-baked bread (duh), and the gardens at Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson).
