A Change of Pace
by Andy Aley
As the smell of fresh fudge and grilled salmon filled the air and the members of a bluegrass band tuned their instruments, a crowd gathered at the Bellingham Farmer’s Market. Groups of families and friends wandered from tent to tent, exchanging pleasant greetings and laughs with the local farmers and artisans who set up shop here every Saturday during the spring and summer. The crowd — which ranged from young, modern-day dreadlocked hippies in Birkenstocks to older, married couples in warm-up suits — braved the possibility of rain, to purchase fresh, locally grown fruits, vegetables and herbs straight from the growers.
“At this farmer’s market, two years ago, we didn’t have that element of the county,” said Mike Nevroth, one of 10 co-founders of Bellingham’s Fourth Corner Slow Food Convivium andorganic farmer who vends at the market. “Retired people from the rural part of the county rarely came to the market.”
Beginning two years ago, a more diverse group of shoppers began to appear at the market.
“It was amazing,” he said. “People who would have never come to this market before, who have an image of it being kind of a little hippie thing, all the sudden they were here seriously buying food.”
Across town at the King Street McDonald’s just off Interstate 5, a scene radically different from the Farmer’s Market plays out as people who view food somewhat differently line up in front of a counter to get their lunch.
Harsh white lights wash over the impatient and hurried customers who stand on a hard tile floor and gaze absent-mindedly at the colorful, back-lit menu board that shines brightly with oversized pictures of popular combo meals. Workers standing motionless behind cash registers encourage customers to super size their drinks and fries. The sound of kids screaming in the playland drowns out the bland Top 40 music trickling from the ceiling-mounted speakers.
At this McDonald’s, as well as the more than 20 other fast food restaurants in Bellingham, a crew of mostly unskilled teen-aged employees assemble food from processed, pre-cooked and frozen ingredients. The food is calorie-laden, quick and convenient — designed to be consumed anytime, anywhere. Although it sounds unappetizing, its appeal is strong. Worldwide, McDonald’s feeds more than 22 million people per day.
While fast food and the fast-paced culture it thrives in seem to be taking over America, Slow Food, an international movement that seeks to reverse that trend, is steadily gaining popularity and notoriety in cities across the United States.
The idea of Slow Food is to eat local food, support artisan techniques and preserve regional tastes, said Mataio Gillis, another co-founder of Fourth Corner Slow Food and co-owner of Ciao Time Catering. The focus in American food production has become growing and producing food that is bigger, better and grown faster, he said. Everything has to look the same and be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The international Slow Food movement, which began in Italy in 1986, currently has more than 60,000 members in 45 countries organized into groups called convivia. Italian journalist Carlo Petrini reportedly created Slow Food as a response to a McDonald’s that opened in Piazza Spagna in Rome, said Mary Ellen Carter, another co-founder of Fourth Corner Slow Food, cookbook author and cooking instructor.
Petrini wrote the original Slow Food manifesto which states, “We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.”
“I guess that’s just the way American culture has developed throughout the years, which is in a way unfortunate,” said Yuri Asano, who helps run the nonprofit organization’s main office in New York. “Our take is ‘Well, let’s go the other way. Let’s slow down and see what’s really available here.’ So it’s not like we’re bashing (fast food restaurants). They’re doing their own thing. What we’re trying to get across is the message that there is an alternative to that type of food, and it is available in the United States.”
Slow Food USA started in late 1999 and currently has 10,000 members, Asano said. Money from membership dues funds publication of newsletters, magazines and educational programs that advocate sustainable agriculture and encourage the appreciation of regional and seasonal foods.
While the name Slow Food seems logically associated with food that is time consuming to prepare, that is not the case nor the point of the movement, Carter said.
“It’s not an anti-fast food movement and it doesn’t mean you have to be in the kitchen all day long,” she said. “It means that you realize where your food is coming from, treat it with respect and share it with somebody. One of the things about Slow Food is that if you get real food at the very beginning, it doesn’t take a lot of time or a lot of energy to cook it because all the taste is there already.”
Jessica Gillis, another co-founder of Fourth Corner Slow Food, said she thinks educating people about where food comes from, how it grows and who grows it will increase the demand for products that are grown in a sustainable manner and traceable to the farmers who grew them.
Being aware of the entire process of growing food — from sowing a seed in the ground to harvesting a crop for sale at a market — and knowing the people who are dedicated to that process enhances a person’s appreciation for what they eat, Gillis said.
“Maybe through events or education, we can convince people to go home and cook again,” Mataio Gillis said. “I think we have an opportunity to educate in a manner that doesn’t make us look like eco-organic anarchists.”
Fast and processed foods, however, are a convenient reality for many Americans. While the convenience-related benefits of fast food are not inherently harmful, the health effects of eating high-calorie processed foods on a regular basis can be devastating.
According to a recent study released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 62 percent of Americans were overweight in 2000, up from 46 percent in 1980, and 27 percent of adults were classified as obese, or more than 30 pounds overweight. According to the study, the primary cause of weight gain is the consumption of more calories than are expended as energy.
The average American’s daily caloric intake increased approximately 24.5 percent, or 530 calories, between 1970 and 2000. The study associates the change with the increased popularity of eating out and an increased tendency to eat larger quantities of food, higher calorie foods — or both — when eating out.
People tend to order full, large meals and desserts at restaurants because eating out has the connotation of being a special occasion, said Kristine Duncan, a registered dietician at St. Joseph Hospital. That mindset works if a person eats out once or twice a month, but people who eat out all the time need to treat meals at restaurants like meals at home, she said.
Obesity, high cholesterol, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and high blood pressure caused by too much sodium and a lack of fruits and vegetables are among the health problems that can result from a diet based around fast and processed food, Duncan said.
“On a basic level, the sooner you eat a food after it’s been picked, the better just because the nutrients are at their peak at that time,” Duncan said. “And one of the things we’ve moved towards is making all foods available all-year round. We can get strawberries in December because we get them from Chile.
“We can get apples all year round because they’re picked in the fall, and they’re kept in cold storage all year round. So it’s something that we have come to expect.”
Duncan said these expectations, which affect the flavor of food as well, are a major reason why excess salt and fat are added to otherwise healthy foods.
“If we went out and picked a tomato right now and we ate it, it would have so many amazing flavors because it was fresh,” she said. “But when we wait to eat it for six months or we pick it early so that it will ripen on the truck so that it will be red in the store, it doesn’t taste the same, and I think in doing that, that’s why we have to add so much salt and fat to things — to make them taste good.”
While eating healthy food is a large part of the solution to obesity and other diet-related health problems, convincing people to give up fast and processed foods as a staple in their diet is difficult, Duncan said.
“They have some type of lifestyle that’s supporting (an unhealthy diet), like they have kids and they don’t have time to cook so it’s just easier to take the kids to the drive-through,” she said. “Or they work some ridiculous job that they might have to work 12 hours a day at, and there just truly is no time to cook at home.”
While fast food is often a quick and easy dinner for many “on the go” families, Asano said she hopes Slow Food will encourage busy people to occasionally slow down and enjoy time with their food, families and friends.
“Come back to the table,” she said. “Take one day a week and do a slow food dinner. Sit down, make pasta, make something from scratch. Go to the farmer’s market on Saturday or Sunday and see who is producing these foods.”
Giuseppe Mauro, who owns Giuseppe’s Italian Restaurant in Bellingham, said a large difference exists between the enjoyment of food in America and Italy, where he used to live.
“In Italy, dining — all food, all wine — is a big thing,” Mauro said. “That’s when (people) get together and when they spend time together to talk to each other and visit, and it’s a big thing. Anything we do in Italy is with pleasure. When we drink a glass of wine, we enjoy it; we spend time with it. I hope soon in the United States it will happen as well because here people are just always in a rush. They really don’t appreciate or get the pleasure out of eating lunch or dinner and giving it some time.”
Slow Food is as much about bringing families and friends together to appreciate each other as it is about enjoying good food, Carter said.
“It says revival of the kitchen and the table as the center of pleasure, culture and community,” she said, referring to Slow Food USA’s mission statement. “I think that’s one of the nicest things you can do is to share something with someone like that. Conversation, food, something you’ve grown out of your garden, something you’ve baked in your oven.”
As Slow Food chapters spring up around the country, food co-ops and health food stores also offer classes that focus on preparing healthy and fresh food. Kevin Murphy, education outreach coordinator for the Bellingham Food Co-Op, said people who attend classes tend to be progressive and conscious of the pace of their lives.
“It’s a group that does kind of hearken back to a more traditional way of living, a slower pace certainly,” Murphy said. “There’s just something kind of basic and kind of friendly about taking time to prepare and to eat a meal and to make an event out of it, rather than just something you’ve got to kind of check off your list so you can get on to the next thing.”
While millions of Americans continue to treat meals as an item on their daily list, which in turn compromises their health for the sake of convenience, hope is found in the growing number of Slow Food convivia, food co-ops and farmer’s markets.
As the bluegrass band began to play and the smell of salmon became increasingly appetizing, a convivial atmosphere was readily apparent in the crowd that had gathered at the Bellingham Farmer’s Market. Despite the group’s differences in age, cultural background and lifestyle, they were brought together and unified at a common time for a common purpose: the pursuit of healthy, fresh and local food.
