A fight against fast food

New movement

Criticism has always been around fast food but despite this no one is paying heed to the threat it poses to our health. At the same time, its ever-growing popularity is taking us away from traditional and regional cuisines. Apart from this cultural degradation, fast foods also have environmental implications and there have been several cases of animal cruelty and workers’ exploitation in the fast food industry.

All these concerns gave rise to the Slow Food Movement that counters the rise of fast food across the globe. The campaign founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 aims to promote traditional and regional cuisines that have disappeared from our plate. According to its website, slow food “links the pleasure of food with a commitment to their community and the environment.” 

Spread across 160 countries, the movement stands at the crossroads of ecology and gastronomy, and hopes to generate a change in eating habits by stimulating patterns of production and consumption. It works on the principle of good, clean, and fair. Good, because it is fresh and flavoursome seasonal diet that is healthy and good in taste and is part of our culture; clean because it is produced with low environmental impact and with animal welfare in mind; and fair because of the accessible price for consumers and fair conditions and pay for small-scale producers.

The four-day event ‘Indigenous Terra Madre- 2015,’ recently held in Meghalaya marked the entry of this movement in India where representatives of various communities from around the world celebrated their food culture and discussed how traditional knowledge and sustainable use of natural resources can contribute to developing good, clean and fair food system.

Petrini, who was in the capital during the curtain raiser of the event, shares, “If food was no longer obliged to make intercontinental journeys, but stayed as part of a system in which it can be consumed over short distances, we would save a lot of energy and carbon dioxide emission. And just think of what we would save in ecological terms without long-distance transportation, refrigeration, and packaging — which ends up on the garbage dump anyway and storage, which steals time, space, and vast portions of
nature and beauty.”

Explaining why Northeast India was the best place to launch this movement in
India, Phram Roy, chairman, North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS), says “The location was chosen because Northeast India is home to more than 250 indigenous groups, and is considered to be one of the most bio-culturally diverse areas in the world.”

Chef Manjeet Gill, corporate chef, ITC points out how globalisation and development has changed the way Indians eat. “High value crops are replacing traditional food and decreasing the biodiversity of what we consume. Millets in the urban areas are now becoming trendy, while in the rural areas it continues to be seen as the ‘food of the poor’. Hence there is a shame associated with this highly nutritious grain,” he says.
This is why, Roy believes that “indigenous communities are at the forefront in the world and they are the holders of ancestral and traditional knowledge.”

“They are the ones who can help us overcome the huge global crisis in which we are currently mired. We all must learn from their holistic vision of nature. We believe that they can make a huge contribution. It is an effort to bring focus back on healthy eating, strengthening ties between communities and helping people re-discover their roots.”