Forsake fast food and convenience cuisine. Savor the enjoyment of ripe, locally grown produce and freshly prepared foods that have made a short, simple field-to-plate journey.

There’s a slower, gentler food movement afoot. People are talking about slowing down our food supply and enjoying the pure taste of food that isn’t weighed down with processing and chemicals. They are buying fresh, ripe produce from local farms that wasn’t picked green, polished with wax, and trucked across the country. People are remembering the way their grandparents and great-grandparents ate, when they harvested apples in the fall and made jars of applesauce for the winter. The buzz is about wondering how your lunch was produced instead of inhaling a burger in the car while fielding cell phone calls. It’s essentially the antithesis of fast food. Welcome to the slow food movement.

Food professionals, chefs, and foodies are embracing this concept and now dietitians are joining their ranks. It’s no surprise, as slow food includes the message that dietitians have been preaching for decades—a focus on whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes. The slow food philosophy digs deeper into the food system, tracing foods all the way back to the very soil in which they were grown. According to Melinda Hemmelgarn, MS, RD, columnist and a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy fellow, the message of slow food is about “thinking beyond your plate.”

As the food supply became increasingly centralized and mega food companies started feeding a growing percentage of American bellies, people lost touch with the food supply and the flavors of real food. These days, it’s easy to find food products that boast maltodextrin as the first ingredient and families gathered around the dinner table for a packaged, convenience meal with a long list of ingredients from all over the country. Ask a classroom of urban kids whether they’ve ever picked a fresh strawberry and let the juice run down their chins. Then, for extra credit, ask them how strawberries are cultivated.

“With the globalization of food, we are no longer eating food in season or fresh. We want to bring it back to people’s consciousness. We don’t want our palates dulled, we want to eat only when it’s ripe and at its fullest,” said Alice Waters recently at the Association of Food Journalists conference in San Francisco. Founder and owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., Waters is widely regarded as the mother of the local, sustainable food movement.

The Birth of Slow Food
Slow Food, an international organization, was founded in 1986 in Italy by Carlo Petrini, who maintained that the industrialization of food was standardizing taste and leading to the extinction of thousands of food varieties. With 83,000 members worldwide, the network is organized into local groups called convivia that are engaged in organizing dinners, tastings, and promoting campaigns. Slow Food’s mission is to help motivate people to come back to kitchens and tables to nurture culture and community. By doing so, the organization hopes to invigorate regional and seasonal culinary traditions and celebrate taste while promoting ecologically sound food production.

“Carlo Petrini, the father of Slow Food, spoke at the Food and Society Policy conference last spring. He described quality food as meeting three criteria: 1) It tastes great; 2) It is produced sustainably, with care for the environment; and 3) The food is produced in a humane and socially just manner,” explains Hemmelgarn. “For example, a food may be delicious and grown organically, but if the people working in the fields are treated like slaves, then it doesn’t fit with the Slow Food philosophy. Individuals who embrace the concept of Slow Food believe it is important to critically question the food we eat and ask, Who grows or produces it and under what conditions? Where was the food produced and how many miles did it have to travel to reach my plate? How were the animals treated in life and in death, and how will the growing practices impact our environment?”

Measuring Food Miles
In the slow food world, people throw around the term food miles almost as frequently as dietitians use the word calories. A food mile is the distance food travels from where it is grown or raised to where it is ultimately purchased by the consumer. In the United States, food typically travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles to get to our plates, according to a recent study by the Worldwatch Institute.1

Most Americans don’t realize that much of food production and processing happens far from where they live and rarely consider the costs of food related to production, processing, storage, and transportation. The environmental costs are the increased amount of fossil fuel used to transport food long distances and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of these fuels. According to USDA Agricultural Marketing Service produce arrival data from the Chicago terminal market, produce arriving by truck traveled an average distance of 1,518 miles. Data from three Iowa local food projects where farmers sold to institutional markets found that the food traveled an average of 44.6 miles to reach its destination. A conventional system used four to 17 times more fuel and released five to 17 times more carbon dioxide from the burning of the fuel than the Iowa-based regional and local food systems.2

Fresh From the Farm
Slow food has helped save small farms that may have been swept up by the big food industry. By supporting local farms, proponents help preserve the bucolic scenery of faded barns and patchwork farms that have been woven into the American landscape, as well as genetic diversity in crops.

In Marin County, California, 25 years ago dairy woman Ellen Straus and biologist Phyllis Faber sensed that agriculture was in danger of being lost forever to non-agricultural land development. They set out to protect the land through the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which is now a model for farmlands across the country. This preservation compensates farmers and ranchers for the development value of their land while permanently protecting the land for agriculture. Now the region is studded with small farms and ranches, such as the James Grossi Ranch and the McEvoy Olive Ranch.

One of the best ways to support slow foods is to frequent farmers’ markets, which promote locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables, and small family farms. The number of farmers’ markets has doubled in the last five years. A recent study from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture showed that farmers’ markets produced $20.8 million in sales and more than 325 jobs for the Iowa economy, turning out to be the No. 1 marketing channel for Iowa’s vegetable and fruit growers.3

Artisan Foods Move in Quickly
The artisan movement, in which purveyors craft foods on a small scale with a dedication to quality ingredients, is walking hand in hand with slow foods, creating a whole new market. People are willing to pay a higher price for food not prepared by the food giants. With 38 workers, The Straus Family Creamery (Marin County, Calif.) sells 27 million pounds of milk per year for as much as 50% more than major brands. Stores like Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats, whose philosophies support slow food, have seen double annual revenue in the past five years. Whole Foods not only stocks a plethora of specialty foods, they have started their own Authentic Food Artisan program in which foods are labeled with a special sticker indicating artisan status. Chefs in elegant restaurants now spell out artisanal products and sources of food ingredients on their menus by name.

Laura Chenel, founder and owner of Laura Chenel’s Chevre, Inc., credits her affinity for goats as motivation for starting her artisan goat cheese production company, considered to be the originator of American goat cheese. Chenel claims that she is extremely involved with her herd of 500 goats, even down to calling them by name. “For me, an artisan is a craftsperson. It is all about care and attention to detail, pride, and ownership,” says Chenel. Her goats are on a healthy schedule of grain and alfalfa feedings intermixed with grazing and play times in the pasture that may put mothers of human kids to shame.

Even meat purveyors are becoming part of the slow and artisan food movements. Oregon Country Natural Beef raises their meat without antibiotics and hormones. At Marin Sun Farms in Northern California, David Evans watches over his family’s herd of Hereford-Angus cows and more than 1,000 laying hens, becoming known for his innovative and humane ranching techniques.

Seasonal Celebration
One tenant of slow foods is eating seasonally, the way people did generations ago. Our ancestors never dreamed of eating raspberries in January. Preservation was necessary and traditional dishes evolved that celebrated the seasons. Celebrity chefs and Martha Stewart have helped make the lost art of preservation en vogue again. A slow food advocate before it had a name, Waters says, “This is an idea that has been around since the beginning of time. We rigidly follow seasons. When we got into winter vegetables, we discovered the flavor and varieties of the winter palette.”

Simply in Season (World Community Cookbook) [Herald Press, 2005], cowritten by Mary Beth Lind, RD, and Cathleen Hockman-Wert is packed with inspiration for eating seasonally. The book lists six reasons to eat simply in season, which include freshness, taste, nutrition, variety, environment, and local health, as farmers’ markets support the local economy.

Slow Roots in Culinary Arts
Slow food gained momentum in the culinary arts community. Waters opened Chez Panisse in 1971 with a dedication to local, seasonal products. Today’s chefs follow in her footsteps by boasting their own organic gardens to supply their kitchens, even picking fresh salad greens on their way to work. They frequent farmers’ markets and change their menus daily to incorporate the latest harvest. They are starting to develop personal relationships with farmers. Dishes on restaurant menus have become simpler so they celebrate the flavor of one particular food, whether it’s a fresh peach or Neiman Ranch beef. Slow food followers are searching Web sites to discover which restaurants are slow food-friendly before they make a reservation. Hemmelgarn reports that she asks waiters which foods on the menu are local before ordering.

Chefs Collaborative is an organization directed to chefs and the food community with a mission to foster local foods and a sustainable food supply. With their Seafood Solutions, Meat of the Matter, and Farmer-Chef Connection programs, Chefs Collaborative offers helpful information about making decisions in the food supply and hopes to be a catalyst for change in the country. “We provide tools for purchasing decisions for chefs and guidelines for sustainable, healthful food,” says Nancy Civetta of Civetta Comunicazioni, the public relations company for Chefs Collaborative.

Edible Gardens for Kids
As it becomes painfully clear that our kids do not have enough face time with real food, slow food has started to take root in school gardens. Dan Desmond, 4-H Youth Development Advisor in El Dorado County, California, says, “In recent years with poor nutrition seen in children, the garden offers one solution. Early research shows that when children garden, they include fruits and vegetables more regularly into their diet.” The National Farm to School Program is listed as a resource in the School Wellness Policy Web site.