science

Slow Food

Slow Food is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Slow Food rather than just read about it. In short: Slow Food is an organization that promotes local food and traditional cooking. It was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 and has since spread worldwide.

Key takeaways

Slow Food belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Slow Food to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Slow Food from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Slow Food is an organization that promotes local food and traditional cooking. It was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 and has since spread worldwide. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It promotes local small businesses and sustainable foods. It also focuses on food quality, rather than quantity. It was the first established part of the broader slow movement. It speaks out against overproduction and food waste. It sees globalization as a process in which small and local farmers and food producers should be simultaneously protected from and included in the global food system.

Organization

Slow Food began in Italy with the founding of its forerunner organization, Arcigola, in 1986 to resist the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In 1989, the founding manifesto of the international Slow Food movement was signed in Paris, France, by delegates from 15 countries. At its heart is the aim to promote local foods and traditional gastronomy and food production. Conversely, this means an opposition to fast food and industrial food production. The Slow Food organisation has expanded to include over 100,000 members, with branches in over 150 countries. Over 1,300 local convivia chapters exist. About 360 convivia in Italy—to which the name condotta (singular) / condotte (plural) applies—are composed of 35,000 members, along with 450 other regional chapters around the world. The organisational structure is decentralised: each convivium has a leader who is responsible for promoting local artisans, local farmers, and local flavors through regional events such as Taste Workshops, wine tastings, and farmers' markets. Offices have been opened in Switzerland (1995), Germany (1998), New York City (2000), France (2003), Japan (2005), the United Kingdom, and Chile. Global headquarters are located in Bra, near Turin, Italy. Numerous publications are put out by the organisation, in several languages around the world. Recent efforts at publicity include the world's largest food and wine fair, the Salone del Gusto in Turin, a biennial cheese fair in Bra called Cheese, the Genoan fish festival called SlowFish, and Turin's Terra Madre ("Mother Earth") world meeting of food communities. In 2004, Slow Food opened a University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, in Piedmont, and Colorno, in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The Colorno branch has since been closed and transferred to Pollenzo. Carlo Petrini and Massimo Montanari are the leading figures in the creation of the university, whose goal is to promote awareness of good food and nutrition.

Objectives

Slow Food incorporates a series of objectives within its mission, including:

developing an "Ark of Taste" for each ecoregion, where local culinary traditions and foods are celebrated creating "Praesidia" grassroots organizations to promote slow foods to the public forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products) organizing celebrations of local cuisine within regions (for example, the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada) promoting "taste education" educating consumers about the risks of fast food educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties developing various political programmes to preserve family farms lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering lobbying against the use of pesticides teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces Founder and president Carlo Petrini believes that "everyone has the right to good, clean, and fair food": good, meaning a high quality product with a flavorful taste; clean, meaning the naturalness in the way the product was produced and transported; fair, meaning adequate pricing and treatment for both the consumers and producers.

Events

Slow Food Nation Slow Food Nation was an event organized by Slow Food USA, which celebrates slow and sustainable foods. Slow Food Nation attracted an estimated audience of more than 50,000 people. Held over the Labor Day weekend from August 29 to September 1, 2008, the majority of the event took place in either San Francisco's Civic Center and Fort Mason Center. Slow Food Nation's founder is influential chef and author Alice Waters. In addition to a specially-created "victory garden" in front of San Francisco City Hall, a marketplace, tastings, and other events, Slow Food Nation featured panels led by food scholars such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, as well as the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini.

National movements

United States

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Slow Food

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Slow Food claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Slow Food before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Slow Food ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Slow Food

In research: Slow Food appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Slow Food in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Slow Food is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1986 establishments in Italy, 1986 neologisms, Bra, Piedmont, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Slow Food outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Slow Food in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Slow Food means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Slow Food out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Slow Food in simple terms?

Slow Food is an organization that promotes local food and traditional cooking. It was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 and has since spread worldwide.

Why does Slow Food matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Slow Food?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Slow Food.