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Flavor Savers

by Melissa Coleman
Hope Magazine

Everyone wants to save endangered animals from extinction, but what about foods? According to the International Slow Food Movement, not enough is being done to prevent the disappearance of traditional, small-production, specialty foods from around the world.

That's why Alan Foster's White Oak Cider, a hard apple cider made in Oregon, was recently inducted into what Slow Food calls the Ark of Taste, a project that "seeks to discover, catalogue, review, and promulgate forgotten flavors and threatened treasures: a whole universe of cured meats, cheeses, cereals, vegetables, local breeds." Over 26 American products (apricots, apples, ales) have been inducted so far, some of 200 from around the world.

Why should we support and save these regional foods? "Products for a local market are made to be eaten, not shipped," says Jonathan White, who creates specialty cheeses at Egg Farm Dairy in Peekskill, New York, and organized the first American slow food event in 1998. "Industrial products generally put convenience to the producer ahead of the joy of the consumer, whereas [these] products strive to put the joy of the consumer on top." And that, says White, means better taste.

Slow Food literature puts it this way: "It is possible to make Coca-Cola anywhere and in any quantity, where as a mountain cheese can only achieve certain flavors if it is produced in a certain place following certain procedures and using certain skills." The movement was founded in Italy in the late 1980s by food-and-wine writer Carlo Petrini, after a McDonald's had opened in Rome's Piazza di Spagna. Its mission is to support distinctive international cuisine, while fighting the loss of regional food culture as fast-food businesses expand around the globe. The organization now boasts 60,000 members from 37 countries, with about 2,500 in the United States.

Aside from the Ark of Taste, chapters (called convivia) organize local events that celebrate the production and enjoyment of regional cuisine, wines, and cheeses--good, old-fashioned food. Portland, Oregon's eighty-member convivium visits gardens, hosts special dinners, and puts on a huckleberry-picking trip to honor an age-old Oregon tradition.
"Globalization of food is a terrible idea," says David Auerbach, one of the first U.S. Slow Food organizers. "Why would you want to get the same food everywhere?"

Slow Food USA
(877) 756-9366
www.slowfood.com

© Hope Magazine, 2000