Join the Slow Food Movement

Last Updated on Friday, 04 September 2009 20:27 Written by GHV Editorial Friday, 04 September 2009 13:10

Recently Alice Waters, a strong advocate of the "Slow Food" movement, was featured on 60 Minutes talking about her efforts to promote and make available in season, pesticide free foods to America.

Alice Waters believes that healthy food should be a right, and not a privilege, and that today's children should be educated early on the importance of nourishing their bodies with fresh, sustainable foods. Waters also believes what science has only begun to conclude; that our national diet could very well be at the root of a great deal of our health problems including cancers, obesity, and heart related illness. She?worries about the other impacts of the foods we eat, be they environmental, political, cultural, social or ethical. The loss of local, rural farms to the corporations that want to anonymously produce mass quantities of food faster and cheaper with no regard for freshness or quality is a top concern.

Started in Italy in the 1980's, the core of the Slow Food movement is anti-fast food, a response to the industrialization of eating and an effort to refocus on locally grown, environmentally conscious foods. It promotes awareness about where food comes from, the way it is produced, who is producing it and how they are treated while doing so.

Slow food also applies to the family table, a place that ideally should be a communal sharing of the days events over a healthy meal but all too often has eroded into the micro-waving of something that is previously frozen and preservative laden, eaten hastily in front of a TV or computer. Ideally, the slow food movement would like to see the return of the family table, upon which would be foods grown locally or even in the family's own garden.

As far as the cost difference of fresh, organic foods, Waters and other like her believe that there is no cost that should be put onto ones health.

" It follows that food that is healthy in every way will cost us more, in time and money, than we pay now." Says Waters. "But when we have learned what the real costs of food are, and relearned the real rewards of eating, we will have laid a foundation for not just a healthier food system but a healthier twenty-first-century democracy."

To learn more about the Slow Food Movement, visit their website at http://www.slowfood.com and make sure to visit your local farmers markets, found here on GreenHudsonValley.com.