Sick of Fast-food? try Slow-food!

Do you know about Slow Food?

Everybody know about fast food restaurants, these places where you go to eat quickly. You just need to enter, order and go sit to eat your hamburger and your french fries. If you do not have to wait in the queue, eating will only take you 10 minutes! This is good for people who are in a hurry. But the main disadvantages about these kind of places are that what you eat there is not very healthy and you do not take time to eat calmly.

In reaction with the frenetic Fast food concept that standardize tastes, the Slow food movement was created. The Slow Food movement started twenty years ago in Italy. It promotes a different approach of gastronomy, in order to restore the cultural and ecologic values.

This new concept is an “ecogastronomic" movement, a new way to eat and as you will soon read, it has non-negligible positive effects on the body and mind.

Indeed, research has established the importance of sitting down and taking the time to eat a proper meal with other people, as opposed to guzzling down drive-through coffee or gulp down fast food at traffic lights, all alone.

In order to find again all the benefits provided by a good meal, it is necessary to reconsider our way of eating, hence the creation of this movement called the Slow Food, that reminds us that eating slowly and healthy is beneficial for our health.

The main focus of this movement lies in sustainability and sourcing of local food. The movement also organizes "taste education" as well as other educational programs in schools and colleges to help people rediscover the joys of eating and understanding the importance of caring about where their food comes from, who makes it, and how it's made.

To reach these objectives, the creators of the Slow Food movement think that we need to slacken up the pace: take time to choose correctly our food, to know it, to cook it properly and to savour it in good company.

The tenants of this movement want to make sure that there will always be a place for home-made food. They consider that the alimentary heritage of the humanity and the environment are endangered by the food industry that offers all the products to quickly satisfy our appetite.

Today this movement is international. There are more than 82 000 members in more than 50 countries, but Italy, with its 35 000 members is still the epicenter of the phenomena.

Most importantly, Slow Food is fun and easy. It doesn't require confrontational forms of protest against Fast Food, it just involves eating local, organically grown foods prepared well, served with consideration, and enjoyed by all. So in a word, take time to eat, and to eat well.