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The Slow Food Movement’s Promise of Pleasure

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Man Smelling Cheese

“For many years #slowfood has been taking a stand to support the rights of small-scale producers who make #rawmilk #cheese and other #dairy products” Digital image. Instagram.com. N.p., 16 Dec. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. <https://instagram.com/p/woCnJnJ-sA/>.

The pleasure of an exceptional meal – the textures, contrasts, accents, presentation, perhaps the company – and the need to protect such pleasure, launched the Slow Food Movement in 1989. Beyond merely an antithesis of fast food, the movement strives to ensure everyone’s access to “good, clean, and fair” food, as opposed to the increasingly bland, uniform food modern agroindustry delivers. Though the global push to work and progress prevents many people from taking time to enjoy food, food is still an essential, often pleasurable, part of everyday life. In promoting tasty, varied local food, the Slow Food Movement utilizes the rhetoric of imminent pleasure, invoking consumers’ memories of favorite meals, enticing consumers with a guarantee of refreshing respite from daily work.

Pleasurable memories can instill nostalgia, driving a desire to return to pleasurable times. Slow Food Movement Founder Carlo Petrini remembers his grandmother’s food in tantalizing detail, how she “liked to add rice to [meat-filled ravioli], and the lightness of the pasta gave the dish a unique consistency and a richness of flavor you would never have expected from leftovers” (Petrini 95). His grandmother’s ravioli left a strong impression on his youth, such that even in later adulthood, he describes the dish as though he had eaten it recently. He cannot use the same rich language to describe the currently omnipresent packaged and processed foods. Now he expresses dismay, since “all these dishes, which are part of my makeup are rarely made any more…Those tastes are in my head, but I have seldom come across them in later years” (Petrini 95). Capitalism’s incessant, impatient, increasing push towards progress and growth leaves little room for adequate focus on creating authentic food like Petrini’s grandmother’s ravioli; he bemoans losing some of the most exquisite flavors he will ever experience. Petrini implies he won’t be the only one to suffer.

Slow Food Movement Logo of a red snail

Slow Food Movement Logo, from www.slowfoodusa.org/

Producers focus on food as a mere vehicle for nutrients, detracts from concern for food’s authenticity, and even further from consumers’ romantic ideals of true food. Until recently, cooks were unconcerned with calories or fat content. Slow Food proponent Michael Pollan notes how Americans’ focus on consuming the right nutrients from food rather than on eating the food itself has “had the effect of removing eating from social life and pleasure from eating;” consumers can no longer enjoy food as much as they once could (Pollan 57). Petrini and Pollan’s emphasis on food’s past pleasure makes consumers long for lost genuinely pleasurable food. Slow Food induces feelings of nostalgia with the promise that if consumers promote quality over quantity of food, they can truly enjoy food again, thereby finding greater pleasure in their meals.

Inside of a Pomegranite

“A Slow Food Earth Market in #Lebanon” Digital image. Instagram.com. N.p., 16 Feb. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. <https://instagram.com/p/y6sMMWJ-t-/>.

The movement’s name and visuals instill a sense of rest from capitalism hectic pace. There is less time now to sit down to full meals and enjoy food; people are constantly working in the name of progress and profit. “Slow Food,” a literary antithesis to “fast food,” holds connotations of relaxation and ease, resembling advertisements for vacations away from the hectic business world. The juxtaposition with a phrase connoting frantic speed and a constant push towards growth beckons consumers to take a break to savor a good meal.

Lest the movement’s name’s literary rhetoric not suffice, the visual rhetoric of the movement’s logo, a simple snail, calls to mind not only pleasurable respite from hard work, but also the incompatibility of juxtaposing a slow, simple outdoor creature with a hurried working-class world. Since the working class has ever less time to slow down or take a break, a chance to be like the snail becomes even more enticing. Any letup in the incessant drive towards progress is pleasurable, especially when it affords time to observe the things they ordinarily miss. Photos on the movement’s official Instagram provide glimpses of pleasurable things of the world, especially the world of food, that consumers miss when they move too fast: the dazzling red of pomegranate seeds, or the smell of fresh cheese. The movement entices consumers with pleasurable respite and opportunities to enjoy the world’s pleasurable gifts, especially edible ones.

The Slow Food Movement uses the rhetoric of pleasure through the inducement of nostalgia and the promise of and call to invigorating respite. The movement ultimately envisions a utopia where food is not only bought and sold, but also served, shared, and enjoyed. Any social movement that promises a utopia motivates its audience to join the cause and fight for a better world. In the case of Slow Food, this better world is a more pleasurable world, one that caters not exclusively to gourmands, but to anyone who eats. This rhetoric of pleasure holds merit when many people today are so deeply involved in work, and often left with little time to appreciate the pleasures of our world. A little self-indulgence certainly won’t hurt.

 

 

Catherine Ashley is a first year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley who has found a more wonderful home in Berkeley than she could ever imagine. The many trees and tight-knit communities, and the occasional rainstorms invoke fond memories of her home in western Washington. She aspires to use her love for the biological sciences to contribute to the STEM fields and to those in need. She loves a good joke and hopes that all of her writing, though it may not always be on food, isn’t too hard to swallow.

 

Heart-shaped potatoes

“#Regram @uglyfruitandveg Happy Friday everyone!” Digital image. Instagram.com. N.p., 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. <https://instagram.com/p/z4aUcYJ-gZ/>.

 

Works Cited

“About Us: Our History.” Slowfood.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2015. <http://www.slowfood.com/international/7/our-history>.

Petrini, Carlo. Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair. New York: Rizzoli Ex Libris, 2007. Print.

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.

 

 


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