Slow Food
[Rod Dreher  03/09 02:08 PM]

We seem to have petered out the food discussion, so perhaps we should wrap things up before we start a food fight. Before we do, I would like to draw attention to a movement of which that Iain would (I suspect) heartily approve: Slow Food. Well, you might not approve of their entire philosophy, Iain — they are, for example, against bioengineered crops; I myself don’t understand why bioengineering to create, say, a vastly more nutritional grain of rice to feed the world’s poor is such a bad thing. Still, the general Slow Food concept is something conservatives should have no trouble embracing. It calls for people to value their food culture, especially their local food culture, as an expression of what makes their part of the world unique. It calls on people to eat more meals at home, and when you eat out, to patronize restaurants that specialize in local food prepared in traditional ways. Slow Food believes that we should use our consumer dollars to support small agriculture producers and food artisans, and tries to encourage the development of local agricultural economies.