open purveyors

Posted by Ed Levine, August 29, 2008 at 10:00 AM

Dear Slow Fooders,

The Slow Food Nation event is upon us this weekend in San Francisco, and I'm feeling a little forlorn that I'm not out there. The organizers have put together what looks like an impressive set of events, with interesting panels, compelling speakers, and lots of seriously delicious food.

Buying local, sustainably raised food is laudable but not enough. We all love the idea of the Slow Food movement and what it stands for, namely supporting sustainable, artisanal food. All serious eaters are down with that notion.

But merely believing in Slow Food as a cause is in and of itself not enough. I have always found the Slow Food movement here in the U.S. to be more about nonspecific soaring rhetoric and less about specific actions we can all take that actually further the cause of slow food in America. Eating delicious, sustainable, artisanal foods and calling attention to those foods is laudable, but it is not enough.

Because right now in America there are hundreds of artisanal food purveyors under siege, threatened by the mushrooming homogeneity of our food culture and the march of "progress."

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