7 ms·

> I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life It's amusing that it has to be a "movement", because pri

by GuiA 12y ago

> I consider the Slow Food movement to be one of the most important movements for true quality of life It's amusing that it has to be a "movement", because prior to a few decades ago everyone was part of the "slow food movement".

dasil003 12y ago
I don't think it's amusing in the least. Have you looked around recently at people's diet and health? It's not just fast food, but convenience foods in general are huge business, and it's people largely bought into the marketing simply because they offer ever increasing taste and convenience. There are huge margins to be made by processing the same mono-culture grains into ever more refined and perfected addictive foodstuffs. Even government policy is shaped by this profit motive because who else is lobbying on farm policy? Food policy an America is a perfect example of where capitalism fails to take into account externalities, in this case the externality is health and wellbeing which has always been recognized as of paramount importance, but nevertheless remains difficult to quantify in economic terms due to the inherent complexities involved. Unless we stop and think critically about it, we are doomed to sacrifice our health to a huge money-making apparatus in exchange for a bit of well-engineered flavor. The status quo which most of of us have known for our entire lives is what necessitates a movement. Perhaps I'm taking your comment in the wrong spirit, but I think it's something that needs to be taken seriously by everyone living in industrialized countries.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  Spoken truly like someone who has no idea what they are talking about. At present industrial countries spend between 9-11% of their annual income on foodstuffs and less than 5% of their time gathering said foodstuffs - the lowest in time/money expenditure for food in the history of the world.[1] If we die slightly earlier due to a possible rise in cardiovascular disease then it was a small price to pay for saving years in productive time. Also, fast food firms are an easy target but when pressed for an answer, the team at Freakonomics made a pretty good case that a McDonalds hamburger is possibly the greatest foodstuff when balanced between cost, speed, safety and bountifulness of nutrients.[2] The real problem with convenience food is not the nutritional content (which is perfectly adequate and superior to most diets across a historical timeline)is the unsustainable agricultural and water scarcity burden it places on the planet. [1]http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-america-spends-on-groceries http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-ame... [2]http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomics-radio/freakonomics-can-mcdouble-save-humanity http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomic...
  - aethertap 12y ago
    There's more to food than nutrition. The process of growing, preparing, and eating food has been a major source of social connection and "quality time," which is in my opinion the most significant value of slow food for well-being. You can get the nutrition you need with a pittance today in terms of economics, but as a society I think we've failed to fill the social gap that was left open by our liberation from the work of eating well. I'm not saying that the gap has to be filled by food (there are probably even better things we could do), just that the slow food movement is using it that way. Filling it with productive work as you describe certainly has economic value, but I think the cost in terms of happiness for some of us kills the reward.
    - vdaniuk 12y ago
      Growing food was a major source of social connection in the same way uranium mines were. Preparing food was a major source of such "quality time" as peeling, flaying, cooking and serving food for a large family. Quality time, indeed.
    - weland 12y ago
      > There's more to food than nutrition. The process of growing, preparing, and eating food has been a major source of social connection and "quality time," which is in my opinion the most significant value of slow food for well-being. Have you ever been involved in the process of growing food? A workday on the farm is substantially longer than any office job, the only way to talk to people is to scream because they're at least thirty meters away from you most of the time. At the end of it you're drained and people who have been doing it all their lives get to live the last years of their lives with terrible back pains and having to rely on the young folks for, um, growing food, because it turns out doing manual labour for twelve hours a day isn't so easy when you're eighty. There's anything but quality time in that. Edit: It also turns out that, with foodstuffs having to be so cheap, this kind of work was also very badly paid, which meant that except for people who owned huge amounts of land (and generally didn't work all, or more commonly any of it), people who had to do this were, if not dirt poor, in any case poor enough not to be able to afford too much. It's the fact that we lost all this chance to have "quality time" that allows us to heartily debate such matters through silicon stuff that shoves charge carriers through really thin glass tubes.

by GuiA 12y ago

dasil003 12y ago

I don't think it's amusing in the least. Have you looked around recently at people's diet and health? It's not just fast food, but convenience foods in general are huge business, and it's people largely bought into the marketing simply because they offer ever increasing taste and convenience. There are huge margins to be made by processing the same mono-culture grains into ever more refined and perfected addictive foodstuffs. Even government policy is shaped by this profit motive because who else is lobbying on farm policy? Food policy an America is a perfect example of where capitalism fails to take into account externalities, in this case the externality is health and wellbeing which has always been recognized as of paramount importance, but nevertheless remains difficult to quantify in economic terms due to the inherent complexities involved. Unless we stop and think critically about it, we are doomed to sacrifice our health to a huge money-making apparatus in exchange for a bit of well-engineered flavor. The status quo which most of of us have known for our entire lives is what necessitates a movement. Perhaps I'm taking your comment in the wrong spirit, but I think it's something that needs to be taken seriously by everyone living in industrialized countries.

ZenPro 12y ago
Spoken truly like someone who has no idea what they are talking about. At present industrial countries spend between 9-11% of their annual income on foodstuffs and less than 5% of their time gathering said foodstuffs - the lowest in time/money expenditure for food in the history of the world.[1] If we die slightly earlier due to a possible rise in cardiovascular disease then it was a small price to pay for saving years in productive time. Also, fast food firms are an easy target but when pressed for an answer, the team at Freakonomics made a pretty good case that a McDonalds hamburger is possibly the greatest foodstuff when balanced between cost, speed, safety and bountifulness of nutrients.[2] The real problem with convenience food is not the nutritional content (which is perfectly adequate and superior to most diets across a historical timeline)is the unsustainable agricultural and water scarcity burden it places on the planet. [1]http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-america-spends-on-groceries http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-ame... [2]http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomics-radio/freakonomics-can-mcdouble-save-humanity http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/freakonomic...
- aethertap 12y ago
  There's more to food than nutrition. The process of growing, preparing, and eating food has been a major source of social connection and "quality time," which is in my opinion the most significant value of slow food for well-being. You can get the nutrition you need with a pittance today in terms of economics, but as a society I think we've failed to fill the social gap that was left open by our liberation from the work of eating well. I'm not saying that the gap has to be filled by food (there are probably even better things we could do), just that the slow food movement is using it that way. Filling it with productive work as you describe certainly has economic value, but I think the cost in terms of happiness for some of us kills the reward.
  - vdaniuk 12y ago
    Growing food was a major source of social connection in the same way uranium mines were. Preparing food was a major source of such "quality time" as peeling, flaying, cooking and serving food for a large family. Quality time, indeed.
  - weland 12y ago
    > There's more to food than nutrition. The process of growing, preparing, and eating food has been a major source of social connection and "quality time," which is in my opinion the most significant value of slow food for well-being. Have you ever been involved in the process of growing food? A workday on the farm is substantially longer than any office job, the only way to talk to people is to scream because they're at least thirty meters away from you most of the time. At the end of it you're drained and people who have been doing it all their lives get to live the last years of their lives with terrible back pains and having to rely on the young folks for, um, growing food, because it turns out doing manual labour for twelve hours a day isn't so easy when you're eighty. There's anything but quality time in that. Edit: It also turns out that, with foodstuffs having to be so cheap, this kind of work was also very badly paid, which meant that except for people who owned huge amounts of land (and generally didn't work all, or more commonly any of it), people who had to do this were, if not dirt poor, in any case poor enough not to be able to afford too much. It's the fact that we lost all this chance to have "quality time" that allows us to heartily debate such matters through silicon stuff that shoves charge carriers through really thin glass tubes.