In Praise of Slow

1:36pm Tuesday 9th October 2007

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I’m feeling slightly unhinged after a weekend in London. I’d forgotten just how manic the place is.It was such a relief to come back to Herefordshire.

I started thinking about what I love about Herefordshire. Part of it is the pace of life. OK I know that we all get a bit carried away from time to time, but there is at least the possibility of slowing things down here. I was intrigued to learn recently that Herefordshire has signed up to the International Slow Food Movement and has its own Slow Food convivium.

The Slow Food movement was started in Italy by Carlo Petrini, in response to “fast-food” and “fast life”. It now involves over 80,000 people in one hundred and four countries around the world. The Convivia - numbering seven hundred and fifty in all - are the Movement's local focus and they organise a variety of initiatives for members.

Embodied within the Slow Food philosophy is the celebration of flavour, artisan food production and sustainable approaches to fishing and farming. It is a holistic approach which recognises that to save an endangered breed of animal or vegetable variety means conserving their habitat, rediscovering recipes and rewarding a discerning palate.

I like it because it reminds us that eating is one of life’s real joys and that it is not simply about physical sustenance. It reconnects us to the idea of eating as a form of social and cultural nourishment.

If you dig deeper you discover a wonderfully radical aspiration to reconceive and redesign the countryside as a joyous place in which plants, animals and farmers flourish. Carlo also talks about reinventing the local economy so that it is more allied with nature and about a nobler, less utilitarian approach to the business of producing food.

To some people Slow Food can be confused with slow service. It’s not about that; but it certainly is about beginning to see ourselves more as co-producers, as opposed to consumers, of what we eat. How we grow, choose, cook, serve and share food is all part of the preparation for eating. We are all involved. What and how we eat defines our behaviour, our lifestyles and our health. It is surely worth giving it our close attention.

Shirley Ali Khan