Slow Food is an “eco-gastronomic” movement that encourages everyone to reclaim the pleasures of the table with friends and family. Eating therefore becomes a moment of sharing and discovery. All are invited to reconnect with traditions or explore new culinary cultures while having an environmental concern. And above all, we must get our hands dirty. Go on! To your pots …

In reaction to the frenzy of speed that has gripped the culture of post-industrial societies and to the concept of fast food which standardizes tastes, the Slow Food movement presents itself as a dissident. It helps the distracted consumer to become an informed foodie.

In 1986, the McDonald’s restaurant chain was preparing to set up a branch on the splendid Spanish Steps (Spanish Steps), a historic site in Rome. Faced with what they consider to be an inadmissible advance in junk food in the land of Italy, the gastronomic columnist Carlo Petrini and his colleagues from the Italian gastronomic company Arcigola lay the foundations for the Slow Food movement. With humor and intelligence, they convince a bunch of Italian artists and intellectuals to join their project. After all, Italy is the birthplace of great European cuisine. French cuisine is even indebted to it for its letters of nobility.

Carlo Petrini first developed the concept of Slow Food as a joke, a philosophical nod to gourmet Italians. Then, the idea took hold so well that in 1989, Slow Food became an international non-profit organization. The launch takes place at the Opéra comique de Paris with the adoption of the Slow Food manifesto for taste and biodiversity, presented by Carlo Petrini¹.

Awakening the public’s taste for quality food, explaining the origin of food and the socio-historical conditions of its production, introducing producers from here and elsewhere, these are some of the objectives of the Slow Food movement.

The supporters of this movement want to ensure that there will always be a place for artisanal foods. They believe that the food heritage of humanity and the environment are endangered by the food industry, which offers all the products to quickly satisfy our appetite.

They also believe that the solution to the problems of undernourishment in the South and malnutrition in the North requires a better knowledge of the diversity of food cultures and the reappropriation of the sense of sharing.

To achieve these goals, the creators of Slow Food believe that it is necessary to slow down: take the time to choose your foods well, to know them, to cook them properly and to enjoy them in good company. Hence the symbol of slowness, the snail, which also evokes the prudence and wisdom of the philosopher, as well as the solemnity and moderation of the wise and benevolent host.

In addition to holding convivial activities focusing on taste education and the discovery of forgotten or endangered local flavors, Slow Food encourages the reappropriation, in terms of food, of artisanal know-how that is slipping into oblivion. under the pressure of unbridled productivism.

Today, the movement has around 82 members in some fifty countries. Italy, with its 000 members, is still the epicenter of the phenomenon. Slow Food International’s head office is located in the heart of the Italian Piedmont, in the town of Bra.

A decentralized movement

The members are divided into local units, each constituting a conducted in Italy or a Convivium elsewhere in the world. There are about 1 of them. dinner means “to live together” and it is at the source of the French word “convivialité”. This is reminiscent of the ritual of the meal that brings humans together around the table in order to nourish life, both soul and body.

Each Convivium organizes its own activities: meals, tastings, visits to farms or food artisans, conferences, taste training workshops, etc.

University of Gastronomic Sciences

Slow Food founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra³ in January 2003, a higher education institution recognized by the Italian Ministry of Education and by the European Union. This training and research center aims to renew farming methods, protect biodiversity and maintain a link between gastronomy and agricultural sciences. We do not teach cooking as such, but rather the theoretical and practical aspects of gastronomy through sociology, anthropology, economics, ecology, eco-agronomy, politics, etc.

Taste Fair

In addition, Slow Food holds public events aimed at promoting good cuisine and good food, such as the famous International Taste Exhibition (International Taste Fair) in Turin, Italy². This event, which is held every two years, allows the population to discover and taste culinary specialties from all over the world, to meet great chefs who agree to share some of their secrets, to participate in taste workshops, etc.

Books

Slow Food also publishes various gastronomic books, including the magazine Slow, published four times a year in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. This is a publication that deals with the anthropology and geography of food. It is distributed free of charge to members of all international units of the movement.

Through various programs, the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity has for mission to organize and finance activities likely to ensure the safeguard of the diversity of the agro-food heritage and the richness of the culinary traditions of the world.

So theArk of taste is an initiative of the movement aimed at listing and protecting varieties of food plants or farm animals threatened with extinction by the standardization of industrial agricultural production. Registering a food item in the Ark of Taste is, in a way, making it board a virtual Noah’s Ark that will be able to protect it from the announced flood.

Note that in Europe, we have lost 75% of the diversity of food products since 1900. In America, these losses amount to 93% for the same period.⁴. Slow Food Quebec has thus registered in the Ark of Taste the “Montreal melon” and the “Canadian cow”, two elements of our heritage threatened with disappearance.

Le presided is in a way the executive arm of the Ark of Taste since its mission is to offer financial and logistical support to farmers, entrepreneurs and artisans who produce food registered with L’Arche. It promotes producer groups and supports the marketing of these products to chefs, gourmets and the general public.

Since 2000, Slow Food Prize for the Conservation of Biodiversity underline the efforts of people or groups who, through their research, production, marketing or communication activities, help to safeguard biodiversity in the agro-food sector. The winners receive a cash prize and benefit from the media exposure that Slow Food never fails to give them in its publications, in its press releases and at public events such as the Salone del Gusto.

Previous winners include a group of Native Americans in Minnesota, United States, who grow wild rice, a plant native to this region. These natives convinced geneticists at a university in their state to refrain from taking out a patent on any new variety of wild rice resulting from their genetic research. Also, they obtained that no GMO variety of this plant is implanted in the region in order to preserve the genetic integrity of traditional varieties.

In addition, the international Slow Food movement shows solidarity with the most disadvantaged on the planet by providing financial support for various projects: recovery of agricultural land and improvement of means of production in a rural community in Nicaragua, taking charge of the kitchen. an Amerindian hospital in Brazil, financing of emergency food programs mainly intended for children in Bosnia, reconstruction of a small cheese factory destroyed by an earthquake in Italy, etc.