Slow Food Movement: The Greener Diet (VIDEO)

The slow food movement sweeping the nation is a throwback to simpler times, when food production was a community affair. Slow foodies advocate home cooking with locally grown ingredients, thus reducing the CO2 impact of shipping foods across the world, supporting local farmers, and knowing your food comes from a place that utilizes ethical business practices and sustainable growing methods.

In this video, KVIE takes a look at the slow food movement, including the new garden in front of San Francisco's City Hall, and the effect the movement has on food banks. Anya Fernald, Executive Director of Slow Food Nation, says of the movement, "The fundamental value is to create a food system that is good, clean, and fair."

WATCH the slow food movement:

Comments

[progressivegreg]

03:42 PM on 07/01/2010

I live in Michigan and we and the states around us grow a lot of great fruits and vegetables. The farmers stands and markets are wonderful, but the growing season is pretty short. I was in a major midwest chain supermarket the other day and looking at cantalope, decent price 2 for $4.00. THEN I looked at the label and it said product de EU. Did I read that right? Product of the European Union. That's across the Atlantic isn't it? How much energy was spent to bring a melon from Europe (Spain or some warm climate I'm guessing) to Michigan to sell it for 2 bucks? Don't they grow melons a little closer to Michigan than Europe? I passed on it!

[VeggieLove]

03:31 PM on 07/01/2010

That's all fine and dandy, but what about making local food more affordable and accessible? I'm fortunate to be in a healthy financial situation, but even I have a hard time spending 5 bucks on a few tomatos at the farmer's market.

[KurtMichaelFriese]

12:30 PM on 07/05/2010

I'd reverse that and try to make the people have the access. Raise their ability to reach it rather than bringing it closer to their reach. This way the farmer benefits as well as the eater. One way to do this is for those of us with means to increase demand for the products, thus increasing the supply, eventually making plenty for all. And if Slow Food is about anything, it is about Good, Clean, Fair for FOR ALL.

It's really a matter of priorities, and for me, there is no higher priority that the health and well being of my family. Since what they eat is so integral to that, I'd much rather budget more for our food and less for other things.

[godwithin]

05:53 AM on 07/01/2010

"Slow food" is the safest and healthiest food, still keep your hands off my nutella :)
From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food
Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. It strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and promotes farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to over 100,000 members in 132 countries. Slow Food began in Italy with the foundation of its forerunner organization, Arcigola, in 1986 to resist the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

[godwithin]

06:01 AM on 07/01/2010

For Slow Food organization in your community see http://www.slowfood.com/

[KurtMichaelFriese]

12:31 PM on 07/05/2010

For Slow Food in the USA it's http://www.SlowFoodUSA.org

[alysheba 3]

04:05 PM on 06/30/2010

Up here in Canada there was a show called "The 100 Mile Diet". The challenge was for families to eat only things grown and/or produced within 100 miles of their hometown for 100 days. There was even a local restaurant that got in on the act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p44gSVHynOI

[Mark NY]

03:56 PM on 06/30/2010

Kenyans now have a way to store food that they grow themselves without worrying about their food going to waste and even have a surplus! All they need is a metal container.

http://www.newslook.com/videos/223704-promoting-food-security-with-metal-containers

We would watch what we do to the food we eat if we had to produce it for ourselves, as these people do.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

02:32 PM on 06/30/2010

Did you all know that farmers are PAID to spray their crops with chemicals..... of course, cause it's easier.... but I spoke with a local farmer in Vermont who grows organic, Emmet, and he said Vermont Farmers are paid for chemicals and anything else that taints our food chain. I suspect out west, this is just the norm for farmers.... so I blame farmers for being complicit in these food chain destroying practices as well.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

02:25 PM on 06/30/2010

I would love to eat from "local" farmers....but I live in Florida, and farmers here spray their crops with the worst chemicals, it IS after all, the swamp...so bugs rule.... not only that, they inject their cattle with more chemicals and hormones that you can imagine. Texas does too.

Have you EVER had a good florida tomato? they're mealy, nasty...and barely red. Yuk!

So unless I see a local "organic" farmer.... which farmers around here don't even know how to spell.... I have to default to the organic section in my monopolizing supermarket....Publix.

I miss the north.

[KurtMichaelFriese]

12:32 PM on 07/05/2010

601 listings for sustainable farms in Florida: http://www.localharvest.org/search.jsp?st=10&ty=-1&nm=

[santiago sherwood]

12:35 PM on 06/30/2010

try this race at home, Make a pasta dish from scratch and kraft mac and cheese. I can make pasta crudo faster and it is healthier and tastes so much better.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

02:26 PM on 06/30/2010

what's pasta crudo?

[santiago sherwood]

05:07 PM on 06/30/2010

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/23/SophiaLorensSpaghettiConP65037.shtml

This is the recipe, try it my kids loved when they were 10 and they like at 25. Even a sith lord can make a Veggie dish.

[cloudjungle]

04:09 PM on 06/30/2010

I have argued this time and time again. Healthy food does not cost more nor does it take a lot of time. It takes some planning. Sadly most people would rather invest their time and energy doing something meaningless like watch TV.

[santiago sherwood]

05:10 PM on 06/30/2010

we play IRON CHEF at home on a weeknight. The winner picks the weekend outing. Great motivation.

[LemonMeringue]

12:13 PM on 06/30/2010

Everything in the grocery store is poisoned unless it's organic, and even then you have to believe the labeling.

It's illegal to label food as genetically modified. Everything is either GM or so full of poisons, antibiotics, hormones, or artificial this and that, I don't want to eat any of it anymore.

Three or four huge conglomerates control nearly all the food sold in grocery stores.

Fight back. Plant a tomato in a pot and see how much food you can get for a $1 investment.

[seehowtheyrun]

01:07 PM on 06/30/2010

Anything labeled 100% organic cannot contain any GMO ingredients.

http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/SG/Home/index.cfm

[seehowtheyrun]

01:10 PM on 06/30/2010

I don't know where my first reply went but foods labeled GMO or 100% organic, or 100% organic ingredients cannot contain GMO's.

[seehowtheyrun]

01:10 PM on 06/30/2010

should read GMO free

[TankGirlz]

11:39 AM on 06/30/2010

haha no I cant (don't seem to be holding it this year)

[TankGirlz]

11:38 AM on 06/30/2010

Cool! I can go to this!! SF Aug 29-Sept1

http://slowfoodnation.org/faq/

[missjulz]

12:51 PM on 06/30/2010

That was 2008. Too bad, I would have gone too.

[A Meat Beetle]

11:35 AM on 06/30/2010

We have eaten several meals in the past couple of weeks in which, except for a few spices and seasonings (and the wine, of course), everything on our table was grown within 100 feet of our house. In fact, thanks to canning and food dehydrating, virtually every day of the year, even in the dead of winter, we eat or drink something that came from our land. I am sitting just a few feet away form more than 20 quarts of grape juice (YUM!) that I canned last fall. It's really not that hard to do and one doesn't need to have a huge piece of land to grow a little food. Try it.

[LemonMeringue]

12:13 PM on 06/30/2010

Square Foot Gardening - the book

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

02:30 PM on 06/30/2010

I'm so jealous!

[organicconnect]

11:28 AM on 06/30/2010

Finding "safe" local foods can be a problem, since so much of our food distribution is now "Monsanto-ized". There are a couple of regional resources to make safe foods more available deserving of note. One is in the Pacific Northwest (http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/06/bringing-back-locally-grown-produce/) and the other is in San Francisco (http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/06/going-mainstream-with-locally-grown-food/).

[farmilyman]

11:26 AM on 06/30/2010

Great trend. Whenever I go on vacation I seek restaurants that serve local food.

[Wendy Chambers]

11:20 AM on 06/30/2010

Love this - back to basics, take away from the corruption of big factory farming and inevitably politicians! and take charge of our own lives and give these small farmers the BOOST they need and totally deserve - nice to see the tide is turning.

[TankGirlz]

11:43 AM on 06/30/2010

Not turning with the majority. I do hope it becomes "trendy"