Talking about Carlo Petrini, founder of the International Slow Food Movement

[Apologies for any typos. I accidentally published this when I intended to preview, re-published as a draft, and then had problems keeping the correct draft as the primary one.]

Event:

An Evening of Conversation with Carlo Petrini,  founder of the Slow Food movement and author of Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat. May 2, 2009, Al Green Theatre.

Presented by the Planet in Focus international environmental film and video festival, in association with the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto.

First off, a story because this is a personal blog about my own experiences, a preamble (more like a pre-ramble): I went to the event, a Q & A, and took a lot of notes. I took a lot of notes. Some of those notes are gone because I did something silly:

Rather than start my notes in the notebook I carry with me, I scrawled them on the cover of a copy of the programme. I then misplaced the programme. It’s likely that I threw it in the recycle bin and took my apartment recycling down to the building’s bin before I realized that it was missing.

However, all was not lost:

• I ran out of space on that front cover and continued in my notebook.
• The Q & A wasn’t as much him answering the Qs as it was him using the questions as vague reference points for him to repeat his messaging.  This seemed somewhat apparent during the talk, but became more apparent when I read articles and interviews about him that were written in the days following. His first “answer” lasted a half hour.

So, last week I typed up my second set of notes, looked for the first for a few days and decided to move on with what I had.

Here are some of the things I learned:

• Farmer’s markets originated in North America. They’re new to Italy.

• Food production is the main reason for the environmental crisis. Cows produce more C02 than cars.  Agriculture and food production = pollution.

Petrini says that we should change our relationship with food and gastronomy. There’s so much more to gastronomy than food porn, he says. “It’s agriculture. It’s science. It’s chemical reactions. It’s history, it’s politics, it’s anthropology, biology and economy.”  Gastronomy is multidisciplinary.

An idea that he emphasized, and I’ve since read in interviews, is eating as an agricultural act. If we eat consciously we become co-producers, not just consumers.

We should…

• …conquer the right to good food for everyone or it will become elitist.
• …Eat less meat.
• …Eat for nutrients/eat nutritious food.

He says that we all live with our contradictions. No one is perfect. This is a good thing.

Some might argue that good food IS elitist, and I know that some people who saw the $125 ticket price for his “Do It Slow Banchetto” event (dinner) the previous evening probably think that such as statement would make him a hypocrite, but I think I get what he’s saying there. It’s about the accessibility of good food. Everyone has the right to a nutritious meal, and a good meal.

Something else he said resonated with me:
Hospitals should use organic, local food. Good food in hospitals will help recovery.

The day before hearing him speak I’d been in a hospital food court in Toronto’s “hospital row” and observed all sorts of fast food. Aside from a salad bar among the offerings I was surprised at how much the area reminded me of a high school cafeteria with its poor nutritional offerings. I was expecting more choices. I went with the salad bar. I didn’t see the options of olive oil and balsamic vinegar until someone else reached for them. I’m pretty sure that the salad dressings on offer were Kraft. Outside the food court was a Subway (subs) and a sushi restaurant. Not bad, good for variety, but again the “healthy” options seemed limited.

Across the street I visited a family member in the hospital (she’s fine, it was a brief stay) and briefly glanced at the menu options. It was enough to make me roll my eyes in wonder. As Petrini says, nutritious food aids recovery. It seems counter-intuitive to NOT include nutrition in recovery and to serve food that’s not nutritious.  Sure, you can make “low salt” or “low sugar” meals for those whose diets specifically require it but over all, it doesn’t make sense to have meals laden with sugar and processed flours. This particular hospital claims to adhere to the requirements for Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating. They produce 350,000 patient trays annually, so that’s around 960 per day, 320 per meal. I can’t say that I remember what I saw in that glance. I really have no idea what hospitals serve. However, my gut feeling (which may be wrong) is that there still seems to be this mass-production ideal surrounding the production of food in hospitals. If this is correct, I think that this has got to change.

Petrini is full of knowledge, full of great gestures, and quite witty. One of my favourite lines that met with laughter from the audience:

Any gastronomist who is not an environmentalist is stupid and an environmentalist who’s not a gastronomist is boring.

I don’t know about the second part – although the food enthusiast in me wants to wholeheartedly agree with this quip – but to the first, I say absolutely. Remember that hospital food court I visited? Something disturbed me greatly: There was no silver wear (or whatever the catch-all term for non-disposable cutlery is). Not only was there exclusively plastic cutlery but it was individually wrapped in plastic. Every fork, every knife, every spoon, encase in thin plastic wrapping.  Now, I wonder if this is for health reasons. Maybe they’ve decided that they can’t sterilize silver wear enough. As far as I know though, sterilized is sterilized.  I can’t speak for the plates. I got a plastic to-go container that, in my ideal world, would have been recyclable. Another thing: While I saw three garbage bins side-by-side, none were labeled or colour coded. I couldn’t tell if they were for different types of waste and if so, which was for glass/plastic, which was for paper, which was for organic. Really, if any cafeteria or food court doesn’t offer an organic waste bin they are behind on the times and I think they’re uncool. Yes, I said “uncool”. I don’t have a better word at the moment. “Negligent”? “Lacking”? Municipal by-law requires that restaurants divert waste to green bins.

Petrini’s final words:

Cultivate biodiversity. Spread cultural biodiversity. There are 5000 languages all over the world. 4500 are at risk of extinction. When we lose them we will become poorer. Differences in language make us richer.

Further reading:

• Roger’s review in BlogTO.

• Gourmets are egotists and pleasure is a right. The Globe and Mail’s Sasha Chapman interviews Petrini.