Eco Bites – Page 5

Old World Meats Make a Comeback as a Sustainable Choice

Posted on May 12, 2010 by ldgourmet — 16 Comments ↓

By Jacqueline Church

Are bunnies the new chickens? Is bison the new beef? Will goat nudge lamb off the menu? While bison, goat, and rabbit aren’t new, per se, they are garnering fresh interest among chefs and home cooks (and media) eager for sustainable options.

new-meats-post Demand for bison and goat is on the rise nationally, says Becky Faudree, Whole Foods’ global meat purchasing team leader. “Bison is one of our strongest-growing categories. We recently began carrying goat, and currently it is only offered in a few regions. Even with the small amount offered, we have seen an increase in sales. We anticipate the bison and goat categories will continue to grow.” Whole Foods may not sell rabbit yet, but other gourmet butchers do. Here’s what you need to know about these chic meats.

Bison

Sustainability story: Because bison are entirely prairie-grazed, they cause less damage to the environment than cattle raised on feedlots. In fact, bison are credited with helping to restore prairies. If you choose a producer like Wild Idea Buffalo, you’ll also know that they are never given antibiotics, growth hormones, or steroids. Wild Idea Buffalo are also slaughtered humanely in the field under South Dakota state inspection.

Taste: similar to beef.

Health benefits: Ground bison has about 25% fewer calories and half the saturated fat of grass-fed ground beef.

Best use: Use it in any recipe that calls for beef; our Buffalo Blue Burgers are a tasty introduction. Take care not to overcook lean bison.

Where to find it: most supermarkets, online, and even big-box stores.

Goat

Sustainability story: Goats forage for their food and require little land and water, making them a more environmentally sound choice than conventionally raised beef, lamb, or even chicken. In Muslim communities, where goat is a popular meat, it must be raised and slaughtered humanely, according to Islamic law. This satisfies growing consumer demand for humanely treated animals.

Taste: Young goat (kid, less than 6 months old) tastes like mild lamb.

Health benefits: 4 ounces of goat has 122 calories and 3 grams of fat (1 gram saturated). A similar portion of lamb has 256 calories and 19 grams of fat (9 grams saturated).

Best use: Goat can be cooked, for the most part, very much like lamb. Shanks may be braised; steaks sautéed or grilled; and more sinewy cuts stewed. Remember, though, that goat is very lean, so take care not to overcook.

Where to find it: Goat is new to mainstream American shoppers, but it accounts for more than 60% of the red meat eaten worldwide. Look for it at some Whole Foods stores in the Southwest, Mid-Atlantic, and South; in Latin, Caribbean, and some Asian markets; and at halal butchers that cater to Middle Eastern and North African communities. Goat is turning up at farmers’ markets, too. It may be labeled chevron, cabrito, or capretto.

Rabbit

Sustainability story: Rabbits can be bred four to seven times per year. “They have a high meat-to-bone ratio, and they require little in terms of resources,” says Jennifer Hashley, co-owner of Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds in Lincoln, MA (which raises rabbits as well as chickens) and director of Tufts Friedman School’s New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. Bunnies’ feed typically includes fast-growing, sustainable alfalfa in addition to foraged fare, says Hashley.

Taste: like chicken.

Health benefits: Rabbit has as much protein as chicken, but about 35% fewer calories and less than half the total and saturated fat.

Best use: Rabbit has long been a staple of French, Italian, and Spanish cuisines. It can be used much the way you would use chicken pieces–braising the legs works especially well. It’s also nice marinated and grilled.

Where to find it: At farmers’ markets and gourmet butchers (you may need to call ahead to order it).

Jacqueline Church is an independent writer whose work has appeared in Culture: the Word on Cheese, Edible Santa Barbara, and John Mariani’s Virtual Gourmet. She often writes about gourmet food, sustainability issues and the intersection of the two on her blog Leather District Gourmet. Currently, she’s at work on Pig Tales: a Love Story about heritage breed pigs and the farmers and chefs bringing them from farm to table.

Grow Heirlooms

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Lia Huber — 4 Comments ↓

I have four gorgeous new raised beds in the back yard (thanks, honey!) filled with rich organic soil, and I’m hankering to get some seedlings in the ground. If you are too, I urge you to take a look at heirlooms.

Before industrial agriculture begat monocrops, which are hybridized or engineered to be high producing and hardy, there were literally thousands of varieties of each vegetable. Often, the seeds of a tomato or a cucumber or a pepper would be handed down through a family from year to year (hence the term “heirloom”) so that within a small village, each family might be growing slightly different cultivars of the same vegetables.

Heirloom vegetables and fruits have been enjoying a renaissance both on restaurant menus and in backyard gardens. Here are a few things you should know if you want to join in too:

By definition, heirloom varieties are open pollinated, which means that the plants are pollinated by bees and butterflies and the like. It also means that the seeds of a particular species will reproduce a similar plant the next year. Where it gets tricky is that open pollination also means that plants can cross-pollinate among families—broccoli with cabbage, limes with lemon, etc.—to create some funky hybrids unless you isolate the blooms of each. An easy solution, though, is just to pluck out any sprouts that clearly come from kissing cousins.
Heirloom vegetables taste—and look—far more distinctive than mass-produced varieties. I’m smitten with big, meaty Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomatoes; deep gold with crimson striations. Candy-striped Chioggia Beets and scarlet Plum Purple Radishes are sweet, whimsical versions of otherwise staid vegetables. Experiment with several and find ones you like.
When you plant heirlooms, you’re doing more than just cultivating a tasty plate. You’re helping preserve the genetic diversity of America’s—and the world’s—crops. As our society relies more and more on monoculture (growing one variety of crop), biodiversity is lost and, along with it, the ability for a species to fight off disease. Think of it this way; the more variation there is in the gene pool of a crop, the more help a plant has to pull from in evolving to fend off constantly-mutating diseases. If a crop is made up mainly of one variety, it can easily be overcome by the more nimble bacteria. And do know, this is an issue; almost 75% of our food’s genetic diversity has been lost over the past 100 years.

Check out Seed Savers Exchange for a dizzying catalog of heirloom fruits and vegetables. For more about saving heirloom varieties, see Slow Food’s Ark of Taste.

This week, if you’re planning your summer garden, be sure to seek out heirlooms.

Earth-Friendly Fare: 3 Ways to Eat Lower on the Food Chain

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Cheryl Sternman Rule — 2 Comments ↓

By Cheryl Sternman Rule

When I think of a food chain, I always picture a giant whale swimming through the ocean gobbling up smaller sea creatures in his path. But food chains are part of a broader ecosystem, and, as humans, our place at the top carries awesome responsibility. Sure, we could go through our lives eating whatever suits our fancy, but doing so without a thought to future generations would be reckless. Here on NOURISH Evolution, there has been much written about sustainability, and at its core, that’s what eating lower on the food chain is intended to promote: sustainable food systems that take the long view rather than satisfying our immediate cravings. With Earth Day upon us, the time is right to consider how eating lower on the food chain benefits not only us, but the planet at large.

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Most people assume the most environmentally friendly diet is one that’s purely local, where food miles are capped to cut emissions created through transportation. In fact, a 2008 study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology revealed that the vast majority of emissions are caused in the production of food, rather than in its transport. This means we want to pay as much, if not more, attention to what we eat and how it’s produced as to how far it has traveled.

In their book Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming (Gibbs Smith, 2008), authors Laura Stec and Eugene Cordero explain that “it takes significantly more energy to make food from animal products than it does to grow vegetables.” Vegetables and grains have an “energy intensity” (a measure of how much energy it takes to produce a food) of 1.2 to 2.5, they note, compared to 16 to 68 for chicken, pork, or beef. And that’s just the production side; there’s the emissions side to consider, too. Producing meat and other animal proteins generates greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane and nitrous oxide, which leaves a sizable carbon footprint, and leads, ultimately, to global warming.

As consumers and diners, then, we have a powerful choice. By eating more plant products and fewer animals products–in other words, eating lower on the food chain–we can collectively lessen our environmental impact and tread more lightly on the earth.

Here are three ways to eat lower on the food chain:

Go vegetarian a few days a week. Grains, seeds, nuts, and produce make up the food chain’s bottommost rung. For more tips on how to incorporated meatless meals into your diet, visit Meatless Mondays, a nonprofit initiative created in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
When you do eat meat, pay attention to its source and production methods. Grass-fed and heritage meats from smaller farms tend to exert a smaller environmental toll than meats produced in factory farms.
Choose sustainable seafood, particularly smaller fish, such as sardines and anchovies.

There’s one bonus benefit to eating lower on the food chain, too: Doing so is not only better for the planet, but tends to be better for our personal health as well.

Cheryl Sternman Rule is a food and nutrition writer whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines, including EatingWell and Body+Soul. She is the voice behind the food blog 5 Second Rule.

USDA Steering Organics to the Center of the Plate

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Kurt Michael Friese — 3 Comments ↓

By Kurt Michael Friese

Among the many unique aspects of living in Iowa is our first-in-the-nation caucus system. Three years ago this week, on an outing with other campaign volunteers to plant trees for Earth Day, I had the honor of meeting a skinny, unknown, African-American, freshman senator from Illinois who had the audacity to believe he could be elected president. I had about three minutes to determine firsthand whether I wanted him to succeed.

So I asked him why, despite Iowa being an “agricultural state,” none of the candidates on either side were talking about agriculture. He told me he expected they would be, but that he preferred to talk about food and health. He then quoted chapter and verse from the previous weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine feature by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

OK, I liked this guy.

When Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucuses and the White House, I had high hopes that our agricultural system would change overnight. Then he appointed Iowa’s former governor, Tom Vilsack, to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my heart sank. Vilsack’s an OK guy, but he always had a politician’s tendency to ride the fence, and any time he did something helpful for sustainable agriculture, he did two more things for Monsanto or Tyson.

Then Vilsack appointed Kathleen Merrigan as deputy secretary, and hope sprouted once again. Merrigan helped develop USDA’s organic labeling rules while head of the Agricultural Marketing Service from 1999-2001, and later ran the Tufts University Agriculture, Food and Environment Program that gave rise to the Community Food Security Coalition.

A recent San Francisco Chronicle article reports how Merrigan, speaking on behalf of the Obama Administration, “outlined a broad array of efforts to elevate organic and local farming to a prominence never seen before at the sprawling U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

After roughly six decades of being the U.S. Department of Agribusiness, Merrigan is trying to put the “culture” back in the department. Her goals include stricter enforcement of the USDA organic label, more support for the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program to connect local farmers with consumers, and improving access to fresh, healthy food in so-called “food deserts.” These goals may sound like dinner table talk for some circles, but they’re a radical departure from the past and a gutsy move on Merrigan’s part. As the Chronicle put it, “Big growers were not thrilled.”

While a few decades late and far from a panacea, the USDA’s apparent epiphany is welcome news for those who care about real food. I believe a few useful next steps might be:

Capping the subsidy system, both in terms of amounts doled out and who gets them. Today 75% of the subsidies in the U.S. go to the largest 10% of farms. In Texas, the No. 1 state in receiving federal subsidies, 72% of farms do not receive government subsidies at all.
Refocusing on healthy food and land stewardship. Today the crop that receives the most subsidies is corn/feed grain; more than twice any other crop. This has created an overabundance of cheap corn and contributed to skyrocketing high fructose corn syrup consumption (along with early onset diabetes and childhood obesity). It’s also why ground- and water-polluting CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) can afford to stay in business.
Moving the school lunch program out of the auspices of the USDA and into a joint program of the Department of Education and Health and Human Services. I believe this program should be administered by people who are inclined put the health and well-being of children before the interests of agribusiness giants.

While we’re at it, there are always a few cabinet shuffles around the presidential midterm. Why not elevate Ms. Merrigan to Mr. Vilsack’s job? We can always hope.

Kurt Michael Friese is the founding leader of Slow Food Iowa, serves on the Slow Food USA National Board of Directors, and is editor and publisher of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. He’s also Chef and co-owner of the Iowa City restaurant Devotay, a freelance food writer and photographer, and author of A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland.

Label Lingo: A Guide to Eggs

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Alison Ashton — 5 Comments ↓

Buying eggs used to be so simple: Grab a carton off the shelf, open it to check for any cracked shells and go on your merry way. These days, however, you need to interpret a myriad of claims on the label before deciding which carton goes into your cart. What do they all mean? Read on . . . we’ve got answers with this guide to eggs.

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General Terms: There are a few terms that are found on the label of every carton:

Grade: Virtually all eggs sold in stores are graded for quality by the USDA. There are three grades: AA (firm, thick whites and high, round yolks with no defects); A (similar to AA, but whites are deemed “reasonably” firm); and B (thinner whites and wider, flatter yolks). Grade A is what’s typically found in stores.

Size: Size refers to the minimum weight per dozen eggs, as determined by the USDA, rather than the size of the individual eggs. Large (24 ounces per dozen) and extra large (27 ounces per dozen) are the most common.

Date: Most cartons include both pack and sell-by dates. The pack date (when the eggs were graded, washed and packed) appears as a three-digit code indicating the consecutive day of the year, while the sell-by date appears as an actual date. Eggs are good for three to five weeks past the sell-by date.

Color: Color is determined by the chicken’s breed, and eggs in stores are white or brown. Heritage-breed hens, like Araucana chickens, produce eggs in a rainbow of hues, from turquoise to coral. Color has little to do with flavor, which is determined by the hen’s diet.

Dietary Claims: When it comes to labels, sorting out a hen’s diet is almost as complex as defining our own:

Natural: “Natural,” according to the USDA, only means that a product may not contain any artificial ingredients or added coloring–essentially meaningless when it comes to eggs.

Organic: Eggs certified organic by the USDA means the hens’ feed is organic; in other words, free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and animal byproducts, as well as chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Organically raised hens also are antibiotic-free.

Hormone Free: You’ll often see eggs labeled hormone-free, but since the USDA prohibits the use of hormones in all poultry products, this applies to all eggs.

Antibiotic-Free: You’ll also find eggs labeled antibiotic-free. The USDA prohibits the use of prophylactic antibiotics in poultry, but some producers still treat sick hens. However, hens generally don’t produce eggs when sick.

Vegetarian: It seems odd that some eggs are labeled vegetarian, since it would seem all chickens are vegetarian. But conventional feed may include animal byproducts to boost the protein level in eggs, whereas vegetarian hens are fed food with no animal by-products. This label also helps strict vegetarians avoid omega-3-fortified eggs from chickens fed fish oil or marine algae.

Omega-3: Hens’ feed may include flaxseed, marine algae, or fish oil to enhance the omega-3 fatty acids in their eggs. Similarly, some producers add marigold extract to the feed to boost the lutein (good for eye health) in the yolks.

Pastured: Pastured is an emerging, unregulated term that producers are adopting to indicate their chickens have unfettered access to the outdoors, where they forage in the grass and supplement their diet with nutritious grubs, worms, and other goodies.

Treatment: There are also a handful of labels that speak to how a hen—and her eggs—were treated both before laying and after:

Cage-free: Cage-free means hens live indoors–in a henhouse–but are not caged. They may or may not have access to the outdoors, and still may live in overcrowded conditions.

Free Range: While the USDA defines “free range” for some poultry products, it’s a loose term that merely means the chickens have unspecified access to the outdoors. Another popular, undefined term: free-roaming.

Trimming: Chickens raised in crowded conditions will peck at each other; so many producers trim their beaks to prevent injury. Producers who don’t engage in this practice will tout “no beak trimming” on the label.

Humane: Humane Farm Animal Care’s Certified Humane program ensures hens have ample space to nest and perch. However, hens may be kept indoors and beak-trimming is allowed. The Animal Welfare Institute’s Animal Welfare Approved program is more generous with space and movement and prohibits beak-trimming.

Fertile: Fertile means there’s a rooster living amongst the hens, which some people prefer as more a more natural option. Some believe fertile eggs are more nutritious, which is not the case.

Pasteurized: Pasteurized eggs have been treated with heat to kill salmonella bacteria and are a good option for using raw eggs in uncooked applications like a salad dressing or if you’re fond of eating raw cookie dough.

By far our favorite choice for eggs though, and the least confusing of them all, is to find eggs from a local farmer (or, in Lia’s case, your own chicken coop). The taste and richness are unsurpassed.

A longtime editor, writer, and recipe developer, Alison Ashton is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. She has worked as a features editor for a national wire service and as senior food editor for a top food magazine. Her work has appeared in Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, and Natural Health as well as on her blog, Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up.

Distinguish Between Farmer and Food Producer

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Lia Huber — 1 Comment ↓

As I was a writing a piece about food policy (nothing like trying to wrap-up agricultural policy in 500 words when the Farm Bill itself is 1,770 pages), a clear distinction stood out between a “farmer” and a “food producer.”

To me, and I think to many of us, “farmers” are those who work the land. They’re the ones who get dirt under their fingernails and whose eyes light up when conversation turns to compost. But while that may be the portrait for the people growing your food, it isn’t necessarily the portrait of the people who own America’s farmland or who are producing your food.

Let’s start out with some basics. First, nearly half of the country—over 1 billion acres—is farmland. Yet only 4% of the owners own nearly 50% of that farmland. And according to data from the USDA, there is a very high correlation between sales volume and how directly involved the owner/operators are with the actual land. Take, for instance, small-scale family farms (which make up 90% of the number of farms in the US). Their owners do 70% of the labor themselves. Bump up to a very large-scale family farm or a non-family farm and the number drops to only 19%.

This means that as farms grow into bigger and bigger businesses, the ones who own and operate them are more likely to be managers and marketers and accountants and less likely to be actual farmers. In other words, they move along the continuum from “farmer” to “food producer.”

This week, if you’re curious, Google the company behind the label on your produce or packages and see if you can find dirt under their fingernails.

Understand Ecosystems

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Lia Huber — No Comments ↓

In this age of green, the term “ecosystem” gets tossed around quite a bit–from technology to tide pools. But it’s an important concept to grasp, as in really understand, when talking about creating a sustainable food system.

Traditionally, we’ve talked of the food chain. But an ecosystem is more like thousands of threads braided together than it is a neat series of links (plankton, small fish, big fish). Whether you’re talking about agriculture or aquaculture, wide open ocean or wild prairie plains, each has a unique set of environmental and biological factors that make it home to a specific mix of plants and animals that, when in balance, all thrive together.

Why is this important? Because trying to alter an end result—be it saving a vanishing species of fish or curtailing greenhouse gas—while ignoring the native ecosystem is like trying to light a candle while it’s underwater. Julie Packard of Monterey Bay Aquarium believes we need to evaluate aquatic ecosystems as a whole in order to save the oceans (and the life within them), rather than working on species-specific solutions. And many believe we need to shift toward more traditional, closed-system farming techniques (where, for instance, manure produced by cows is used to fertilize the land that grows their food) in agriculture.

It’s a little word, a big concept, and the foundation of talks to come.

This week, lock on to the meaning of ecosystem.

Heritage Meat and Poultry: Eat it to Save it!

Posted on March 17, 2010 by ldgourmet — 4 Comments ↓

By Jacqueline Church

I dined on a Mulefoot pork chop at Cochon restaurant in New Orleans with a rush of pleasure, anxiety, and guilt. If this hog breed is endangered, should I be enjoying it so much? I thought. But in truth, the pork is what brought me to the restaurant; by eating the endangered breed, I was actually helping to save it.

heritage-breeds The Mulefoot is just one threatened breed listed by Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste and the American Livestock Breed Conservancy. Both organizations seek to preserve endangered foods, including vanishing breeds of pigs, turkeys, cattle, and poultry. For example, did you know over half the swine breeds listed in the USDA Agriculture Yearbook of 1930 have disappeared?

Once modern, large factory farms emerged in the 1920s, pigs, turkeys, chickens and cows were bred to be docile and mature quickly. Animals were moved from pastures to crowded feedlots and fed cheap food that often made them sick (which led to widespread antibiotic use). And stressed animals on unnatural diets produce meat that is inferior in taste and quality. The good news is, conservation, biodiversity and superior taste are all part of the re-emerging food values inherent in heritage breeds.

Heritage breed farmers like Lisa Richards, owner of Mack Hill Farm in Southern New Hampshire, practice environmentally sound biodiversity. She and her husband raise Tamworth pigs–hardy foragers prized for lean, fine-grained meat. The farm is also home to sheep that yield milk for making yogurt and cheese (as well as whey that feeds the pigs), and chickens and Midget White turkeys that pick through manure in the pasture, breaking the parasite-bacteria cycle so the pigs can safely root the manure back into the soil as they forage.

This natural approach means that heritage breeds take longer to reach market weight and require pasture to roam and forage … which costs more than raising them on a feedlot … which means farmers can only raise heritage breeds if there is a market for them. Which brings us full circle.

As my Cochon experience demonstrated, chefs are a crucial link in the farm-to-table journey. Heritage breeds have long enchanted chefs, who are introducing diners everywhere to them. Chefs and consumers swoon over heritage breeds’ distinct characteristics, like high intramuscular fat and rich, fine-grained meat.

But diners are sometimes stunned at the prices of heritage products, which can cost $5-$10 or more per pound (reflecting a truer cost of food production than their conventional counterparts). Nonetheless, there are ways to incorporate heritage meat and poultry into your food budget.

Ask for it. I discovered heritage pork (a Tamworth-Berkshire cross, labeled only as “fresh pork shank”) for $3.99 per pound at my specialty grocer. Costco now carries D’Artagnan, which represents sustainable, humane small family farms and cooperatives. LocalHarvest.org can help you find farmers who sell directly to consumers, at farmers’ markets, and through CSAs in your area.

Eat less meat. The average American consumes 15 cows, 24 hogs, 900 chickens, 12 sheep, and 1,000 pounds of other assorted animals in their lifetime, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That‘s a half-pound of meat per day–almost twice the USDA’s recommended 5 ounces of lean protein for a 1,800-calorie daily diet.

By consuming smaller portions of more heritage meats, buying from farms or specialty grocers, and demanding heritage breeds at your mega-mart, you can help improve your family’s health, the environment, and breed diversity. As the Ark of Taste’s motto says, “Eat it to save it!”

Food Policy in Four Parts: An Introduction

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Lia Huber — No Comments ↓

For most, choosing what to eat seems as simple an affair as browsing the grocery store aisles. But in reality, there is an incredibly complex—and some might argue supremely ineffective—system governing what gets put before us and how it came to be.

food-policy-intro-post This series has been a long time coming for me. Years ago, as I set about on my dual quest to learn more about agriculture and health, the relationship between the two became impossible to avoid. Yet linking them is a knotted rope of policy and politics that can stymie rather than support momentum towards a healthy environment, vibrant communities and nourished people.

The bottom line is three-fold:

Everything about our food system—and by food system I mean how food is conceived, grown, distributed, marketed and consumed—is interconnected, although most often those connections are not planned out very wisely or even deliberately.
We are at a crossroads. There is unprecedented opportunity for groundbreaking policy change; there is also the choice to continue down the path we’re currently on. The decision is ours to make.
As individuals, we have more power than we think to affect positive change when it comes to our food system. Marion Nestle, nutritionist and food policy activist, says that we need to vote both with our forks and at the ballot box. AG Kawamura, Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture, points out that to do that, we must first be educated about what we’re voting for.

And that is what this series on food policy is meant to be; a straightforward education on the primary pieces that make up our food system, and a needle to stitch them all together.

Watch for more in the coming weeks.

Slow Movement

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Kurt Michael Friese — 1 Comment ↓

By Kurt Michael Friese

I may have been the first in my family to “go pro” becoming a chef, but my life has always revolved around food. Growing up, the conversation over Saturday lunch was inevitably about what was for dinner – who was making what, where it would be procured, whether to sauté or steam the carrots or broccoli. In fourth grade I met the boy who would become my best man and godfather to my son at the lunch table discussing what was in our brown bags. So it’s not entirely surprising that I became passionate about the Slow Food organization early on.

slow-food-post Slow Food International started over 20 years ago when an Italian food and wine journalist named Carlo Petrini learned that McDonald’s was coming to his country (and even worse, to Rome). So he organized a protest. With the help of other media friends they staged a march that drew nearly 100,000 people to eat traditional penne pommadoro and lament the assault on their culture that McDonald’s represented.

The upshot of that protest was a budding organization named in opposition to the fast food that had provoked its birth. What began simply as a group of gourmands wary of the threat to their beloved cuisine quickly became a global movement of environmentally conscious foodies. Concerns over food security and food justice were soon added to the list. Today there are over 100,000 members joining together in local chapters called convivia (including the one I founded in Iowa) in 129 countries around the world promoting “good, clean and fair food for all.”

From the national and international level to the individual local chapters, Slow Food uses a wide variety of activities to educate and inform on the importance of real fresh food and the centrality of the farm, the kitchen and the table in our everyday lives.

Preserving Diversity

One of Slow Food’s core agendas is to save real food before it becomes a quaint memory. During the time that Slow Food has been in existence, its Ark of Taste program has cataloged and reinvigorated hundreds of foods in danger of extinction. That may sound exaggerated, but the statistics are startling. 93 percent of American food product diversity has been lost since 1900 (75 percent of European food product diversity disappeared during the same time period). Thirty-three percent of livestock varieties have vanished or are near vanishing and nearly 30,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct in the last century; one more is lost every six hours. Another important Slow Food program, Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), brings together food producers, chefs and consumers in identifying and preserving America’s unique foods and traditions.

Strengthening Small Farmers and Artisans

Small farmers and artisans, often struggling to remain economically stable, produce many of the foods spotlighted by these initiatives. Through programs like Terra Madre and Presidia, Slow Food helps strengthen these small producers committed to responsible and sustainable food production. The Terra Madre network and biennial conference brings together farmers, food producers, cooks, activists and academics to put their heads together, learn from and help one another, while Presidia provides a support network to artisan producers to help keep their production viable.

Fighting for the Health of Our Children

But Slow Food has a direct impact on our health too. Last fall, in an initiative that brought back memories of that fated cafeteria table, Slow Food USA brought the nation’s attention to the problem of unhealthy school lunches. Its Time for Lunch campaign and the Labor Day “Eat-Ins” around the country (think old-fashioned activism with a hot dish to share) raised awareness, and had an arguable influence on Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move campaign for healthier kids. Taken with the USDA’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative, it’s clear that Slow Food’s ideals are beginning to hit the mainstream.

Getting Connected

Members of Slow Food get connected through their local chapters, made up of people who care—and are curious—about the link between food, agriculture, health and the environment. Convivia gatherings can be social, educational or political in nature (or, in many cases, all three at the same time), and members also have access to regional, national and international events that celebrate good, clean, fair food.

The most profound benefit to joining Slow Food, though, is becoming part of the growing movement that is actively leading the way in changing how America eats.

Kurt Michael Friese is the founding leader of Slow Food Iowa, serves on the Slow Food USA National Board of Directors, and is editor and publisher of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. He’s also Chef and co-owner of the Iowa City restaurant Devotay, a freelance food writer and photographer, and author of A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland.