Food ReLOVution: How What We Eat Can Change the World

Food for Change is the revolution that Slow Food started 30 years ago, and which we want to (re)launch at the upcoming Terra Madre Salone del Gusto. We want to get consumers—we like to think of them as co-producers—to play a more active role in the food production process by reflecting on their choices and actively improving on them.

We can and must think more deeply about the decisions that we make when shopping, using food to bring about the change needed to guarantee a future for our planet and to help construct a better, cleaner and fairer food system. We can inform ourselves and make choices. Making a choice is the simplest tool, available to all, and also the most powerful. Because when we decide what to put on our table and how, we are also deciding what type of economy to support, what relationships to prioritize, if and how we want to protect natural resources and the environment, if and how we want to defend the rights of workers and indeed our own health. Without forgetting that a food made in an environmentally friendly way, with respect for the dignity of the people who produced it, is also a more delicious and beautiful food.

Our views are shared by the makers of Food ReLOVution: What we eat can make a difference, a documentary that explores the consequences of meat culture given the growing concern about the impacts on health, world hunger, animal welfare and the environment of a meat-heavy diet. It comes as no surprise that they also play on the word “revolution,” because what we need is a revolutionary change in our eating habits which, not to put too fine a point on it, are currently destroying our planet. We consumers are convinced that we are the last link in the chain and we passively accept whatever the market fobs off on us. The real news is that we are the market and we are the ones who can shape it with our choices.

This is what Food ReLOVution shows us: Global problems and solutions concern all of us and are all interlinked. The documentary, say its makers, “aims to show how these global issues affect everyone and are interrelated, and how making our food choices with a sense of awareness, knowing what we are buying and what we are eating is the first fundamental step towards a better world.” They continue: “Everything we eat has a consequence. Knowing this helps us to reflect, to understand the impact of our daily choices and to act with awareness; actions based on coherence, understanding and the love that is born from respect for Life. The change we’ve been waiting for starts with ourselves. Choice is our most powerful weapon, let us learn to use it. Only then can we make a contribution to changing the world. There is a need for us not simply to trust the food dogmas imposed by society, but to get to know what we eat, the only way that we can kickstart the revolution. A revolution carried out with love.”

Because this is what we are talking about: Consciously choosing the food that we bring to the table is an act of love for ourselves, for those dear to us and for our planet. It means better health and better quality.

Find out more about the film, the people featured in it—including Carlo Petrini—and how to buy the DVD: