Local Food For Thought
Check out the whole article by Molly Schwartz & Donna Schaper
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070709/watch_your_foodometer
Something very strange has happened to food in the richest country of the world. We can get a bad tomato just about any time of day in any season. We eat out of paper bags and drink the magnificent beverage of coffee out of Styrofoam cups. While we are drinking the coffee, we worry about the possibility of nuclear war over oil. We eat alone. We eat while driving. We eat but there is nothing sacred or beautiful or slow about it. My own people come to meetings and leave half a foreign country's worth of paper and Styrofoam behind. We have our coffee hour with paper cups. Kids eat chicken fingers over and over again--and slow food has to organize as an (increasingly popular and fast-growing) international movement. Imagine having to organize politically for the right to eat slowly and well. The fast food economy has created a world in which we have to protect ourselves from it.
Fast is the enemy of feast. In this supposedly wonderful world, many of us no longer know how to eat, or sleep with the peace of a shepherd. Imagine giving up eating and sleeping in order to follow orders about how to eat and sleep. Remember, (the pizza gal) falsely said, "I can make that for you fresh."
When we get real about food, we look like utopians to others. They make fun of us as silly and wide-eyed. One look at her pizza and one made fresh ought to take that argument straight to the landfill. Every interaction in good food is slow, whole, just; every interaction in fast food is fast, distorted, tasteless and unjust. Who is the utopian? And who the fool?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070709/watch_your_foodometer
Something very strange has happened to food in the richest country of the world. We can get a bad tomato just about any time of day in any season. We eat out of paper bags and drink the magnificent beverage of coffee out of Styrofoam cups. While we are drinking the coffee, we worry about the possibility of nuclear war over oil. We eat alone. We eat while driving. We eat but there is nothing sacred or beautiful or slow about it. My own people come to meetings and leave half a foreign country's worth of paper and Styrofoam behind. We have our coffee hour with paper cups. Kids eat chicken fingers over and over again--and slow food has to organize as an (increasingly popular and fast-growing) international movement. Imagine having to organize politically for the right to eat slowly and well. The fast food economy has created a world in which we have to protect ourselves from it.
Fast is the enemy of feast. In this supposedly wonderful world, many of us no longer know how to eat, or sleep with the peace of a shepherd. Imagine giving up eating and sleeping in order to follow orders about how to eat and sleep. Remember, (the pizza gal) falsely said, "I can make that for you fresh."
When we get real about food, we look like utopians to others. They make fun of us as silly and wide-eyed. One look at her pizza and one made fresh ought to take that argument straight to the landfill. Every interaction in good food is slow, whole, just; every interaction in fast food is fast, distorted, tasteless and unjust. Who is the utopian? And who the fool?
posted by Michelle Coder | 12:34 PM
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