Slow Food Nation: Why our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair

242 Pages·2013·1.34 MB·English

by  Carlo Petrini

First published in paperback in the United States of America in 2013 by
Rizzoli Ex Libris, an imprint of
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
www.rizzoliusa.com
Originally published in Italian in 2005 as Buono, Pulito e Giusto by Gli struzzi Einaudi © 2005
Slow Food Editore srl, Bra, Italy This ebook edition © 2013 Slow Food Editore srl, Bra, Italy All
rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without prior consent of the publishers.
eISBN: 978-0-84784146-2
v3.1
The aims of this book are to develop ideas, raise awareness, and arouse passion. If those aims have
been achieved, much of the merit will be due to Carlo Bogliotti, who in recent years has discussed these
ideas with me and rendered valuable assistance in the drafting of the text. I would like to express my
gratitude to him for his generous help.
“A worthy successor to Brillat-Savarin, Carlo Petrini has reinvented the idea
of gastronomy for the twenty-first century. An important book.”
—Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
“Carlo Petrini is one of the most important thinkers of our time, not only
about what to eat, but also about how to live. This book is essential reading
for anyone who cares about social justice, the environment, and the
fundamentals of a good meal.”
—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
Introduction
I. A WORRYING PICTURE
{DIARY 1} PEPPERS AND TULIPS
{DIARY 2} TEHUACÁN
{DIARY 3} LAGUIOLE
1. A worrying picture
2. A single destiny: nature, man, and food
3. The Millennium Assessment
4. Restoring food to its central place
5. Agroindustry?
6. A new agriculture for the planet
7. The gastronome
II. GASTRONOMY AND NEW GASTRONOMY
{DIARY 4} MY GASTRONOMY TEACHERS: ORGANIZERS, WRITERS,
PRODUCERS, AND GOURMETS
1. Gastronomy
{DIARY 5} ALICE
{DIARY 6} THE FLORENCE GROUP
{DIARY 7} PLEASURE AND HEALTH
2. The new gastronomy: a definition
III. QUALITY AS AN OBJECTIVE
{DIARY 8} THE TASTES OF MY MEMORY
1. Good
{DIARY 9} THE INDIAN PRAWNS
2. Clean
{DIARY 10} GREEN CALIFORNIA
3. Fair
IV. THREE IDEAS TO PUT INTO PRACTICE
{DIARY 11} NEW YORK AND THE IDEA OF TASTE WORKSHOPS
1. Education
{DIARY 12} AT MOROZZO FAIR: THE CAPONS
2. Co-producers
{DIARY 13} SIR ALBERT HOWARD
3. Dialogue between realms
4. Backward in what sense?
V. CREATING
{DIARY 14} THE SAMI AND THE MONGOLS
1. Creating a network
{DIARY 15} SHORT CIRCUIT SAN FRANCISCO–BAJARDO
2. Bringing about cultural change: a holistic vision of the world
of gastronomes
{DIARY 16} CHIAPAS, ROCKEFELLER, AND THE SMALL FARMERS OF
PUGLIA
3. Creating a fair and sustainable food distribution system
{DIARY 17} RURAL GENEROSITY
4. Creating a new system of values for the network of
gastronomes
Conclusion
Appendix: From the Manifesto on the Future of Food
Afterword: 10 Things Every American Can Do to Strengthen Our Food
Communities
Bibliography
Notes
FOREWORD
Alice Waters
When my friends and I opened the doors of our new restaurant Chez
Panisse in 1971, we thought of ourselves as agents of seduction whose
mission it was to change the way people ate. We were reacting against
the uniformity and blandness of the food of the day. We soon discovered
that the best-tasting food came from local farmers, ranchers, foragers,
and fishermen who were committed to sound and sustainable practices.
Years later, meeting Carlo Petrini for the first time, I realized that we
had been a Slow Food restaurant from the start. Like Carlo, we were
trying to connect pleasure and politics—by delighting our customers we
could get them to pay attention to the politics of food.
Carlo Petrini is the founder of the Slow Food movement and an
astonishing visionary. Unlike me, he grew up in a part of the world with
a deeply traditional way of eating and living, where he learned an
abiding love for the simple, life-affirming pleasures of the table. When
he saw this way of eating in Italy start to disappear, he decided to do
something about it. Slow Food began as an ad hoc protest against fast-
food restaurants in Rome, but it has grown into an international
movement built on the principles he sets forth in these pages.
Carlo has put big ideas together in sparkling, strong language that has
survived translation from his robust Italian and that breathes easily and
naturally. His voice is, above all, that of a person whose senses are
expertly attuned, and whose mind is in constant exercise. It is a voice
that is also irresistibly engaging. His argument has both the warm
familial resonance of your favorite uncle’s storytelling and the bracing
intellectual rigor of your most inspiring teacher; its tone—now high,
now low; now dry, now droll—is that of the calm and hopeful voice of
reason itself. You will like this voice.
Most Americans are put off by the word gastronomy; it evokes either
gastroenterology or, at best, gourmet pretention. But Carlo heroically
appropriates and redefines the word. By gastronomy he wants us to
understand a new science, which he defines as the study of our food and
all the natural and manmade systems that produce it. It is therefore
nothing less than the study of our place on earth and our survival as a
species. It is a science far more comprehensive than any of the
traditional social sciences. Indeed, because gastronomy relates to the
study of every subject taught in school, it can organize and enliven the
curriculum as no other subject can. And if economics is the dismal
science, gastronomy is certainly the cheerful one—because of its
assertion of a universal right to pleasure.
The vision he sets forth in these pages is of the planet as an ark shared
by all its inhabitants. The lifeline with which Carlo would bring us
aboard is woven from three conceptual strands. He argues that, at every
level, our food supply must meet the three criteria of quality, purity, and
justice. Our food must be buono, pulito, e giusto—words that resonate
with more solemnity in Italian than do their literal English counterparts.
Our food should be good, and tasty to eat; it should be clean, produced in
ways that are humane and environmentally sound; and the system by
which our food is provided must be economically and socially fair to all
who labor in it. Carlo’s great insight is that when we seek out food that
meets these criteria, we are no longer mere consumers but co-producers,
who are bearing our fair share of the costs of producing good food and
creating responsible communities.
Carlo’s argument moves gracefully (not surprisingly, he is a very good
dancer) in a way that transforms his curiosity, delight, and outrage into
something like a cross between a tango and a treasure hunt. Carlo
persuades us that it is the education of our senses that allows us to
experience the beauty and meaning around us in the world. Few thinkers
have been able to convey the delight of enlightenment so well. Carlo
argues that such enlightenment can be available to every person on the
planet. Thanks to his generosity and humanity and his disarming charm,
it is an argument that never becomes hortatory or strident. Above all, it
is the argument I have been waiting for, an irrefutable demonstration
that making the right decisions about food can change the world.