Product Description
By now most of us are aware of the threats looming in the food world. The best-selling Fast Food Nation and other recent books have alerted us to such dangers as genetically modified organisms, food-borne diseases, and industrial farming. Now it is time for answers, and Slow Food Nation steps up to the challenge. Here the charismatic leader of the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, outlines many different routes by which we may take back control of our food. The three central principles of the Slow Food plan are these: food must be sustainably produced in ways that are sensitive to the environment, those who produce the food must be fairly treated, and the food must be healthful and delicious. In his travels around the world as ambassador for Slow Food, Petrini has witnessed firsthand the many ways that native peoples are feeding themselves without making use of the harmful methods of the industrial complex. He relates the wisdom to be gleaned from local cultures in such varied places as Mongolia, Chiapas, Sri Lanka, and Puglia. Amidst our crisis, it is critical that Americans look for insight from other cultures around the world and begin to build a new and better way of eating in our communities here.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 4 reviews)

Slow Food Nation: A Socialist Eater's Manifesto

Let me start off by stating that I agree with the essential concept of this book. I think we should all try to slow down, buy locally grown, fresh, seasonal food and cook a few meals from scratch. However, while reading the book something kept striking me as odd. The wording seemed charged, like a propaganda piece meant to demonize modern agriculture and our fast paced society, though Mr. Petrini repeatedly admits that a return to subsistence agriculture could not possibly support the current world population. I thought that maybe it was just the translation then on page 187 I came across the statement, "We do not need the accumulation of wealth, but its redistribution..." Then I realized, it is meant to be bit of a propaganda piece which explains the rhetoric. And, I have to wonder about the first example in the book, the traditional peppers of Asti that are no longer grown in Asti. Peppers are a new world crop and could not have been in Italy much before 1500. Here in America that might seem historic, but in the land of the Roman Empire that is barely out of adolesence. I guess it is okay to pick and choose which local, traditional foods one chooses to wax rhapsodically about.
October 03, 2008

Slow Food's Petrini continues to evolve

Carlo Petrini has been attempting to preserve a more traditional view of food for a long time, this book lays out his current thinking in a clear and concise layering of understanding food in culture (gastronomy), understanding quality (good, clean, fair food), and the tools to put these ideas to work in the world going forward.
As we reconstitute a food culture based on transparency and quality in the USA and hopefully across the globe, this book provides key ideas related to respect for diversity of food products, respect for food in culture, and respect for the work associated with food that can serve to guide us. This book made me think and laugh, and I recommend it highly.
December 28, 2007

Marvellous introduction to the Slow Food movement

More than a reaction to Fast Food's arrival in Italy, Slow Food
has evolved into a global movement encompassing many different actions to improve what we all taste and eat.
It's not about eating well in the privileged, Michelin-starred table sense. It's about recognizing everyone's barriers to eating well and judging the quality of our food on three levels, asking whether it is good, clean and fair. (The book's original title is just that: Buono, pulito e Giusto).
The movement's founder wrote this book to set out a new definition of gastronomy, enumerating some of the issues facing our food supply and helping to turn a thinking eater to positive action.
Beautifully translated, Slow Food Nation is a cogent & readable introduction to what Slow Food is about. Highly recommended!

December 08, 2007

Slow Food: Rich in Character, Intelligence, and Hope

Carlo Petrini gave a lecture at NCSU in Raleigh earlier this year. His talk was in Italian, but his ideas were universal: if we want happiness and peace, we're going to have to change the way we eat.

The book is fantastic. It is beautifully written, powerful, and balances scientific data and understanding with cultural histories and sensible aestheics. His proposal of a new branch of science, gastronomy, is as revolutionary as Freud's proposal to study the human psyche or David Kelley's efforts to study design as a science.

This book is The Inconvenient Truth for those who eat. But it is also a far more optimistic book, for the solution to the problem of industrial agriculture is to seek out good food, to meet and learn about the farms and farmers who grow it, and the reward is pleasure.

The Introduction by Alice Waters is, like the food at Chez Panisse, a sensual as well as a sensible delight.

This is a great book to buy, read, and then share with others, all around the world.
September 28, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
by Alice Waters

Slow Food Revolution: A New Culture for Eating and Living
by Carlo Petrini, Gigi Padovani