What comes to mind when you think of slow food?  Painstakingly making a meal from scratch all day while you wither away in anticipation?

It’s true that the slow food movement is an alternative to fast food, but its mission is actually more widespread. Last weekend at Harbourfront’s Hot and Spicy Food Festival, I ducked away from the frenzy of piquant flavours and international beats to hear one man wax about the solemn state of our North American food culture. But actually, it wasn’t solemn at all. Paolo Di Croce, the executive director of Slow Food International, gave all in attendance a pretty good reason to feel inspired about the state of our food attitude in Toronto. Here’s why:

Slow food, Paolo explains, is about celebrating local cuisine, preserving family farms, small scale food processing and doing our own gardening. The movement started when a man from Italy named Carlo Petrini protested against the opening of a McDonalds in Piazza di Spagna in Rome in 1986. He rounded up some homies and they brandished bowls of penne as symbols of protest. Big Mac lovers were fuming. Didn’t they know Italy was about pasta, not patties!?

Carlo Petrini’s message was, and continues to be, simple: buy local produce, make your own dinner and don’t waste anything. Food is a building block of family, community and culture. He believed that a gastronome who is not an environmentalist is stupid, and an environmentalist who is not a gastronome is boring. The bottom line is, we are in trouble when we forget that the two are so closely connected. Petrini also referred to our refrigerators as “halls of death” because we let too much go to waste in there (in the U.S., 40% of food produced goes to waste in the home!) We want things quickly, we grow bored of stuff fast and then we throw it out. Since his McDonalds-protest rumpus in the 80’s, his food pride has inspired people in 132 countries across the world to appreciate the food grown and made in their own ‘hoods.

Now, Paolo Di Croce crusades around the world promoting the slow food message. One of the most shocking moments of his lecture was when he brought up the mega quarry that is going to be dug by an American company 62 miles north of Toronto. The quarry, meant to supply crushed limestome to Toronto’s booming construction industry, will carve out a hole deeper than Niagara Falls and ruin thousands of acres of fertile farming land (attn: poutine lovers – the area provides Toronto with 90% of its potatoes). It could also contaminate the drinking water of over a million Ontarians. Local residents started to raise concerns about the environment when 30 farmhouses, and countless trees and bush lots were bulldozed. Hence, the Ontario government is planning on doing a full environmental assessment. Let’s hope that they will save our water and poutine. Not only for the sake of hangovers. (Sign this petition to help stop the quarry!)

The good news is, Ontario really cares. The Canadian Chef’s Congress is hosting a “Foodstock” on the remaining farmland that is not taken over by the quarry on October 16th and will gather 20,000 people together to celebrate local food, bare-feet in the mud style. And in Toronto, our food education is top notch – some of our health food stores are like community centers, offering workshops and classes, our farmers markets are bangin’, we are pretty much obsessed with craft beer, and culinary students at George Brown are required to read the Omnivores Dilemma. With an attitude like this, I’d say we ain’t doing too bad.

After the lecture I walk out of the theatre into a crowd of people chomping on corn cobs and delighting in free samples. There are families with kids and dogs, hand-holding couples, swaggerific pre-teens, and photographers. It’s a pretty beautiful thing that the festival managed to bring together food fans young and old, sort of like the sea of tiny free samples were our family dinner and the fake green turf of the Harbourfront marketplace was our kitchen table. This festival is one way Toronto really shows it passion and appreciation for food, that’s a pretty necessary step toward change.

Next up at the Harbourfront: Vegetarian Food fest! I’m already bracing myself for a slow-food inspired appreciation of tofu-art.

~ Kait Fowlie