Slow Food: The Case for Taste

Slow Food: The Case for Taste not only recalls the origins, first steps, and international expansion of the Slow Food movement from the perspective of its founder; it is also a powerful expression of the organization’s goal of engendering social reform through the transformation of our attitudes about food and eating.

How often in the course and crush of our daily lives do we afford ourselves moments to truly relish, to truly be present in the act of preparing and eating food?

For most of us, our enjoyment of food has fallen victim to the frenetic pace of our lives and to our increasing estrangement, in a complex commercial economy, from the natural processes by which food is grown and produced. Packaged, artificial, and unhealthful, fast food is only the most dramatic example of the degradation of food in our lives, and of the deeper threats to our cultural, political, and environmental well-being.

Petrini discusses the evolution of the movement and its call for the safeguarding of local economies, the preservation of indigenous gastronomic traditions, and the creation of a new kind of ecologically aware consumerism committed to sustainability. On a practical level, it advocates a return to traditional recipes, locally grown foods and wines, and eating as a social event.

Linger a while, then, with the story of what Alice Waters in her foreword calls “this delicious revolution,” and rediscover the pleasures of the good life