| Summer 2002 Volume IV, Issue II |
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE SLOW FOOD MOVEMENT By Dr. Martin Collis, Ph.D. "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly." - Mae West
"Why do the French enjoy escargots? Because they don't like fast food!" A bad pun, but a reminder that there are viable alternatives to the homogenization and standardization of foods and the gulp and run style of eating promoted by fast food franchises. The way many people eat has changed more in the past 40 years than in the previous 40 thousand. In the name of expediency, progress and profit margins we are consuming meats from animals raised on anti-biotics, pesticide drenched fruit and vegetables and genetically modified 'Franken foods.' As Eric Schlosser points out in his must read book, 'Fast Food Nation' (see a summary of this book in 'Recommended Reading', Fall 2001 edition of Well), now out in paperback, the taste of your fast food will probably not come from the food itself, but will be 'enhanced' and 'modified' by a 'flavourist.' Writing in my local newspaper, the Victoria Times Colonist, Pam Frier notes that, 'Processed food that's been canned, frozen and dehydrated is essentially food devoid of flavor. A mammoth "replace-the-taste" industry has evolved as a result." The Silicon Valley of the flavor replacement industry is found among the plastics factories and pharmaceutical companies in the industrial desert of New Jersey. With a little amyl valerate, benzyl isobutylute, dipropyl ketone and a few more selected chemicals you have a 'strawberry' flavored milkshake. Want that "deep fried in beef fat" taste for a McDonald's french fry that's fried in vegetable oil, no problem. There is even a machine called a universal TA-XT2 Texture Analyzer, which is essentially a mechanical mouth to help develop the appropriate 'mouth-feel.' If the creaminess or crispiness isn't quite acceptable to its sensors it's easily 'texture-corrected' with the addition of appropriate fats, gums, emulsifiers and stabilizers. This bland leading the bland fast food culture has evolved from the convenience of occasional meal replacement to a mainstream source of nutrition for millions of people and plays a major role in the obesity epidemic. It is not surprising that resistance to the 'instant gratification', 'more is better', eating mind-set has led to the formation of the Slow Food movement. I became aware of the Slow Food movement when I saw an advertisement for cheese and honey tasting at a festival on Vancouver Island, promoted by the local chapter of the Slow Food movement. I visited the Slow Food web site at www.slowfood.com and discovered that what I was seeing in my hometown was a local manifestation of a global movement. The birth of Slow Food was triggered by the appearance of a McDonald's in Rome's Piazza di Spagna in 1986. This prompted Carlo Petrini to create an organization for those who love food and know that love takes time.
There is nothing precious or pretentious about Slow Food. It is about appreciating and enjoying one of life's great pleasures. (Remember there are more books written about food than sex.) This can mean helping maintain regional cuisine, supporting retail outlets and restaurants who show concern for the quality, variety and uniqueness of their food and participating in an initiative called the Ark of Taste which is attempting to identify and catalogue products and dishes that are in danger of disappearing. It is easy to appreciate that higher yields from grains, more milk from faster developing livestock and pest resistant plants might be part of the fight against hunger in the world. The Slow Food movement is there to remind us that bigger, faster and more is not always better and that diversity is part of the picture. An example of this, is the Slow Foods' championing of the Piedmontese cow in Europe. The Piedmontese cow produces superb cheese and high quality beef but was disappearing because of the popularity of the Holstein cow which produced more milk and was ready for slaughter more quickly. Slow Food supported a group of 16 farmers to raise Piedmontese cows and encouraged them to use organic and natural methods to raise and feed the animals. When mad cow disease struck, the Peidmontese offered a safe alternative to the speed produced beef. For as we subsequently discovered mad cow disease had its origins in the feeding and living conditions of some cattle. Because the cows take longer to mature Piedmontese beef costs about $0.50 a pound more than speed beef. But in addition to buying safety and flavor you get many other health benefits.
As Bob Dylan once noted, "Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling Gods of speed and steel." Fast food is a totally dollar driven industry and it's challenging to market healthy food to a nation exposed to billions of dollars of promotion for the cheap gratification of adult pablum. However, there is always a market for quality and as the wellness and slow food movements gain momentum so do the opportunities to market good food. A notable success story is Whole Foods Market Inc. who have spread throughout the US and has just arrived in Canada with an outlet in the Yorkville area of Toronto.
One thing I like about Whole Foods is that they treat their employees well, offering a variety of creative benefit packages. This is in direct contrast to a number of fast food giants who've lobbied furiously to keep the minimum wage as low as possible and then looked for loopholes to pay some employees even less.
"Well" Goes to Provence
On behalf of our 5000 plus 'Well' readers, Nancy and I went to the cradle of Slow Food, the Rhone Valley in Provence, where vineyards carpet the landscape, with the vines linking arms in an endless one legged vine dance and the air is stained with the scent of honeysuckle, broom, wild thyme and roses; and poppies turn fields in magic scarlet carpets. The shops and markets shut at mid-day and re-open around 3:00pm and food and wine are a way of life, the locals do not need to be reminded of Paul Simons' "Slow down you move too fast." We stayed in a neighbouring village to Patricia Wells, a high priestess of Provencal cooking. Her philosophy of food sounds like a Slow Food manifesto. "Keep it fresh, keep it simple, respect the seasons and allow the integrity of the ingredients to shine through. (e.g. Don't drown the meal in 'special sauce'.) Her 4 'f's' are, "food, family, friends and feasts."
I'm a surprising person to be writing this piece, as I come from the American male school of cooking, where I didn't necessarily go to fast food joints, but I liked my food fast. My modus operandi of cooking was 'double the temperature, halve the time.' The microwave was my friend. However, I married a 'foodie' who knows chefs like I know soccer players and she is my gastronomic guide. We dined in little restaurants among the vineyards, where we ate marinated mussels, each of which were tied up and presented like little gifts and foie gras which defies description. (Using words to describe food is like using music to describe architecture.) But it was the cheeses and breads, the tomatoes and croissants which were the daily delights. We were living among people who shop for bread twice a day and take 2 1/2 hours for lunch. Nancy and I shopped at the markets almost every day and I played the role of sous chef. What a remarkable species we humans are who can take the necessities of food and drink and turn them into pleasures and treasures and ultimately to art forms. A Market Driven Economy Deconstructing the Mystery of French Markets Through the eyes of an economist, logistics expert, town planner or any bureaucratic bean counter, the typical French market is inefficient, nonsensical and a formula for failure. The formula goes like this: take a town with streets narrower than aisles at Wal-Mart and minimal parking and fill it with hundreds of stalls. They are attractive and feature fresh food and an endless variety of other merchandise from necessities to objects d'art. This attracts thousands of people who come into town with their cars, children and shopping baskets. The market stalls take up most of the available space, so parking has to be innovative and some distance from the action. By 9:00 am the town is filling up and lines are forming at the more popular stalls. Each individual purchase can take as long as buying a week's worth of groceries at Safeway. There are no shopping carts, as there is no room, and no credit cards accepted, this is strictly a cash and carry enterprise. Yoked by their baskets the customers move from stall to stall checking off items from their lists. Towards mid-day the town is clogged with customers and you have that magic merchandising shopper/vendor interface where cash is flying over the counters. The markets respond to the customer feeding frenzy by closing down, not for lunch, but for another time, another town, another day. Show's over. This means that the café's and bistros are instantly full, so most people trudge off in search of their cars and a crowded drive home.
Then why do the markets work so well? The markets flourish because much of France is a cuisine driven culture, whereas North America is a convenience driven culture, where shelf life is more important than self-life. Many North Americans eat to live; millions of French citizens live to eat. For lovers of food and wine the markets have their own form of convenience. The convenience of having the 10 best producers of olives and olive oil in the region to select from. The convenience of being able to taste test 20 different cheeses and to talk to the person who created them. There are no degrees of separation between the producer and the purchaser, because the producer literally stands behind their product and will sell it to you. Quality and price are controlled by competition; if the peppers and tomatoes on one stall are substandard or expensive, there will be plenty of alternatives a few steps away.
Each market is an event, with energy, entertainment and a sense of community and communication. Ask a supermarket employee for help with a product and they'll direct you to the appropriate aisle, ask someone at the market and you might be invited to their farm or vineyard. After a wine tasting at the Uzes market we were invited to the vineyard of third generation vintner Luc Reynaud who is producing some astounding wines. Luc was preparing for bottling the next day, but took the time to take us out into his fields and explain how the leaf structure and method of staking different varietals provide optimal growing conditions for the sugars and tannins in his grapes. If you ever find wine labeled Domaine Reynaud buy all you can get.
Could this concept be successful in mainstream North America? Not a chance! Producing and marketing products this way is too labor intensive, you can't franchise fruit stalls, you'd need multi-story parking for all the S.U.V.'s (which barely exist in France). There would be pages of bylaws and city ordinances to prevent the placement of a market in the middle of town (not to mention hostility and litigation from nearby stores and franchises) and even if you could overcome all these problems, the customers would not, and in some cases could not, walk for a couple of hours carrying their shopping. So the markets will remain another part of l'exception francaise. As an aside, I couldn't help noticing that overweight and obesity were radically less among the market customers than you would typically see in a North American supermarket. This was not a fat free population but they looked pretty good. Food I'm sure was a factor in this, but there is one other possible reason. When I checked my pedometer at lunch after a morning in the market I had already walked over 8,000 steps and burned about 400 calories. Conclusion Ultimately, the answer is not fast food or slow food but good food. The leisurely pace of the Rhone Valley cannot be exported to the USA, each country and culture must seek its own nutritional salvation. The overall numbers in North America are bad but here are signs of hope, the organic islands are getting bigger in the supermarkets, juice bars and vegetarian restaurants are multiplying and there's a growing realization that good nutrition need not be bad business. The Japanese style boxed lunch called Bento is now gaining popularity in North America. Bento is typically a healthy mix of veggies, sushi, rice and sometimes grilled meats. Individually people could use Aretha's solution of a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for their marvelous body/minds and be more conscious of what they eat and drink. The reduction in smoking has been a North American success story and it's been relatively easy to demonize the big bad cigarette manufacturers. But taking on the fast food empires is a lot harder. People don't have to smoke to live, but they do have to eat. No research could show that a few hamburgers and fries were bad for your health, so what we're dealing with is a dosage problem. Taxation of fast foods is a hot discussion topic in recent editorials, and a number of US states are funding wellness initiatives by taxing soft drinks. In Europe an increasing number of countries are banning junk food ads from children's TV programming. But it's difficult to legislate common sense and it's impossible to legislate cultural preferences. Until people figure out that they don't want to be fat, diabetic and vulnerable to chronic disease and that they can change their lives by better food selection and increased physical activity, little change will occur. Until parents understand that one of the great gifts they can give their children is an appreciation for good food and exercise (this is best achieved by example) we will continue to breed ever- increasing numbers of bloated kids. As long as we sit our kids in front of TV screens and allow their developing minds to absorb 10,000 fast food messages a year they, and we, will have problems. If low cost and high convenience are the dominant criteria in our food choices our health care system will buckle under the weight. Bon appetit.
"Finally, a food label I can understand! Each serving contains 10 grams of fat and 5 grams of thin."
"Slow Food' Registration Form:
Annual subscription fee: individual $60USD, $90CAD and couple $75USD,
$110 CAD Recommended reading: "Best of Slow" (www.chelseagreen.com) "Utne Reader" June 2002 edition (www.utne.com) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
My
experience in the US Whole Foods stores has been generally very
positive. I've enjoyed walking among the produce, which is displayed
like a Cezanne still life. The breads are more like a Parisean boulangerie,
some crusty as an old Brit and as variable as the passengers on
a New York subway.
