A sober thought, and a reason why we should all be concerned about food and the environment, and recognize that they are intertwined-
From - Carlo Petrini
Speech at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Conference
This is how I was convinced to become an environmentalist: I went to eat in a small restaurant in my own native territory near Turin. I had grilled sweet red peppers with olive oil and garlic, a specialty o f the Piedmont region. I tasted it, and there was something wrong with it. They just weren't that good. I asked, "Where do these peppers come from?" They said "Oh, they're from Holland." They were grown hydroponically. They were all identical. There were 32 to a box, not 31, not 33. "And they cost less than ours," the cook was proud to say. "And they last longer than ours." But of course, there was no pleasure of taste. And so I asked the farmers around this restaurant, "Hey, where are those local peppers you used to have around here?" And they said, "Well we just don't grow them anymore because we can't make money on them." And I said, "Well, inside those hot houses where you used to have red peppers, what do you have now?" And they said, " Tulip bulbs!"
And you may laugh, but in your hometown this is happening everyday. Look what you've got on your plate, and you'll see your red peppers come f rom Holland too. And tourists come to Piedmont because they are told there are famous red peppers. And this is the great cheat. There is cheating every day on our plates. There is deceit. we must go back to local agriculture, and go back to giving pride to these farmers, having a human rapport with these farmers.
Full speech at Slow Food USA
Make sure you care, make sure you have a relationship with where and who your food comes from. If each one of us starts to make more deliberate choices then we can and will reverse the trend o f too fast- too impersonal- before it is too late…
*Lauren
2 comments:
I couldn't agree more! Every place I go now, I wonder where my food is coming from. We've allowed ourselves to fall into a illusion of where our food is coming from, when we really don't know. So much of our food is cloned, duplicated, test-tube grown, drug-infused (for animal protection) that is is amazing.
I only hope that there are more people out there like you, me, and Carlo that are starting to take charge and figure out where our food really is coming from before it is too late.
Great post! There is nothing to do but spread the word. Thanks for sharing this!
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