Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini spoke yesterday on restoring a healthy relationship with food.

Charles Howard Candler Professor Marshall Duke and Centers for Disease Control Nutrition Scientist Joel Kimmons also spoke at the event, titled “Food, Pleasure and the Family Meal.”

About 120 students, faculty and staff listened as Petrini spoke about the ideology behind Slow Food, an international movement whose motto is “good, clean and fair” and aims to preserve local cultural food practices.

Petrini emphasized steps that farmers and “co-producers,” his preferred word over the passive term “consumers,” could take to ensure healthy food is viable to produce and widely available.

Petrini said that though today food is bought according to price instead of value, food has been regarded as sacred with important ties to family and religion — beginning with hunter-gatherers holding the animals they hunted sacred — for thousands of years.

Food has had significant social value, he said.

“When my grandfather finished his meal, he would collect the bread crumbs from the table, and if one fell to the floor, he would pick it up and kiss it,” Petrini said.

But now, he said, young people are not aware of the cultural importance of food.

“If your great-grandmother knew about this, she would be very anxious,” Petrini said, as he pointed to a student in the front row. “If could you talk to her and tell her you live in a society where you spend more to lose weight than to eat, your great-grandmother would say you are crazy.”

Petrini said the consequences of ignoring food’s cultural importance and applying industrial criteria to food production affects all aspects of human life. Industrial criteria can be applied to textiles, furniture or steel, Petrini said, but agriculture requires a special relationship involving the earth’s metabolism, which turns “living seeds into plants.”

For example, he said, the consequences of industrial techniques such as mass-producing food and using chemicals to grow food results in the gross overproduction of food, including 22,000 tons of food wasted daily in the U.S.
Petrini said an industrial approach also results in “negative externalities” in areas outside of food production alone, such as the environment, soil fertility and health — especially in the form of health-care costs and the issues associated with obesity.

“We need to restore our relationship with food and bring back value to food,” Petrini said. Supporting small farms is one way to do this, he added.

But, Petrini said, becoming a farmer is difficult because this career path is not accorded the same cultural dignity as other more well-recognized career paths, such as medicine and law.

“But a lawyer just sells words, and you can’t eat words,” Petrini said.
Petrini said the goods farmers sell don’t result in a liveable wage.

“You will produce a nice organic tomato, and you will want to go on holiday or have a nice house. But buyers will tell you no, that is too much to ask for a tomato, look at all those other cheap tomatoes we have,” Petrini said.

Petrini outlined four ways in which the audience could afford to eat higher-priced sustainably-produced foods and support farmers.

His first suggestion was to buy from local farmers, which would reduce food costs because the cost of transporting the food is incorporated into the price of food — shorter distance means lower prices. People could also add more seasonal foods, such as the collard green, to their diets, he said.

By only purchasing what will actually be eaten, Petrini said, co-producers would spend less on food that will be wasted and could use those cost savings to purchase higher quality food. Finally, co-producers should cook frequently and use leftovers to cook, he said.

The other speakers also spoke on establishing a healthy relationship with food, but in other aspects of society.

Duke discussed discoveries in his research about food and the family meal. With researchers in the Center for the Study of Myth and Ritual in American Life, Duke gathered data on families’ function and adjustment before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Their research found families who ate meals together two or more times per week were better able to cope with the trauma, and their children coped better overall. The ongoing construction of daily activities and family histories shared during meals increased bonding and resilience, Duke said.

Duke said he shares Petrini’s view that American youth today need to hold their grandparents’ cultural approach to food instead of embracing contemporary fast food culture.

“Middle-aged people in this room probably crave meatloaf and mashed potatoes for their comfort food when they’ve had a bad day,” Duke said. “My grandchildren, who are in their teens now, twenty years from now will say, ‘I’m feeling terrible; let’s get some food wrapped in paper and eat it in the back of a van.’”

Duke said with the Slow Food approach to meals, families will spend more time together during meals to share family stories.

Kimmons, who grew up on an organic farm, spoke about the practical considerations of government food regulation.

“As a government employee, I believe in working for the people, but in a bureaucracy you need layers of regulation to assist businesses and protect consumers.”

Kimmons said the difficulty in starting a farm lies in how to establish a sustainable farm through the layers of regulation and make a living, which needs to be feasible because of the negative health impacts of the American processed food system today.

The best way to ensure the food system is improved is to “vote with your fork,” Kimmons said, because where Americans spend their food money will determine future regulation.

College senior Emily Cumbie-Drake, founder of the Green Bean Coffee Cart, also heard Petrini speak about Slow Food at the Georgia Organics Conference on Saturday and said Petrini’s speech was “inspirational.”

“It’s really enjoyable working with Julie Shaffer, who started Atlanta Slow Food, and to see the founder of the movement remind us you don’t have to be a farmer to save the world,” Cumbie-Drake said.

Shaffer, who organized the event with Director of Sustainability Ciannat Howett and Goodrich C. White Professor of Antrhopology Peggy Barlett, said she wanted to bring Petrini to Emory because he is a “visionary leader” of the Slow Food movement and “has done so much good work in the area of food justice,” and relates to Emory because of the University’s dedication to sustainability.

Third-year medical student Adam Carlisle attended the dialogue because he is studying the impacts of diet on cardiovascular health. Carlisle said he thought the negative externalities Petrini spoke about was the most interesting topic.

“A week ago I didn’t know about the Slow Food movement, but my work with Mediterranean diets shows food can impact many other parts of society,” Carlisle said.

Petrini said in an interview with the Wheel he wanted students to “keep in their hearts the true value of food.”

“Be active as co-producers and not merely consumers, and be respectful of the earth, farmers and food’s qualities,” he said.

— Contact Anna Molberg.