WWIII: Fast Food Vs. Slow Food

Protecting the world's cuisine from tasteless plastic monopolies like McDonalds and Taco Bell, the Salone del Gusto takes place every October in Turin, Italy, and is one of the most important meetings within the Slow Food movement, an international movement 40,000 members strong and now present in over 35 countries. With its 'taste-ins' and culinary exhibitions, the conference is at once a gastronomic roundtable, wine tasting, and educational seminar on various regional foods and wines that the organization has dedicated itself to preserving.

After becoming enraged by the opening of a McDonalds in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome in 1989, Italian journalist Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food…an inspiration that overtook him as he digested a long and slow lunch. Soon after lunch Petrini and a couple friends launched the movement, a retaliation against the onslaught of genetically modified Frankenfoods and homogenized factory-farmed foods.

The Salone del Gusto is also a market place dedicated to quality food and wine hosting more then 500 Italian and international exhibitors. Another area is comprised of 254 Taste Workshops, with highlights including Italy's most famous cheese (farmhouse buffalo mozzarella), Bavarian specialties (just in time for Oktoberfest), and chocolate (just in time all the time). At a Taste Workshop, participants don't just eat and drink: they savor, they bask in the magnificence of their gustatory experience.

The Slow Food Movement proposes a practically complete alternative lifestyle. Food is perceived as inseparable from the culture, art, and history of the communities which create it. A variety of Slow Excursions are planned within the region to encourage Salone's visitors to view Slow Food as the unifying and sustaining element of humanity.

Salone del Gusto
Turin, Italy
October 2005

For Info: salone@slowfood.it
www.slowfood.com.