Carlo Petrini, who died on May 21 at age 76, used many thousands of words to explain the Slow Food movement he founded. Almost all of them, though, can be boiled down to just three. Food, he liked to say, should be “good, clean and fair.”
Many copywriters who make a living in advertising will never come up with a slogan as concise or appealing. It is a testament to the flair for communication that Mr. Petrini brought to pitching his cause in books, conversations and countless speeches.
It also points to one reason his message has resonated so widely that the Slow Food organization he started in Italy in 1986 now has chapters in more than 150 countries. Each of the three words has to do with people.
Good food, obviously, can make people happy. It should be clean to protect them from dubious additives and protect the environment they share. And the people who grow the food, prepare it and bring it to farm stands, supermarkets and restaurants should be paid and treated fairly.
This was a big vision, rooted in basic human values. Just how big probably wasn’t apparent at the moment of Slow Food’s birth in Rome, when Mr. Petrini and other activists chanted protests against the city’s first McDonald’s while handing out bowls of penne. Were they comedians? Luddites? Latter-day Don Quixotes tilting at cheeseburgers?
Their quest seemed futile. In a strict sense it was: The offending McDonald’s is still in business. But the foundation was laid for Mr. Petrini’s far-reaching critique of everything fast food represented: a profit-driven, culture-flattening, assembly-line sameness that made mealtimes less healthy, less social and less enjoyable.
Mr. Petrini had been a communist, and there was an anticapitalist strain in all this. But the solution he proposed was not seizing fast-food companies and turning them over to the workers. Instead, he argued for cultivating a network of small local food businesses by directing more profits to the people behind them — conscious capitalism with a side of hedonism.
In gastronomic circles, Alice Waters and other chefs found that Mr. Petrini’s views crystallized their growing dissatisfaction with both the products of an industrial food system and the way it was reshaping the world. That we could save the things that make us feel more human by spending money on dinner was an attractive idea. One of the first American writers to appreciate this aspect of Slow Food was Corby Kummer, who in 1999 wrote about the group in an article in The Atlantic titled “Doing Well by Eating Well.”
Wedded to Mr. Petrini’s personal charisma, this human-centered agenda carried him beyond the circles of those who shared his leftist beliefs. His alliances with politicians on the right helped Slow Food put down roots in Europe. His friendship with Pope Francis led to Mr. Petrini’s writing the reading guide to the papal encyclical “Laudato Si,” which stressed the moral and spiritual importance of caring for the environment. He bonded over organic farming with Prince Charles, who in 2004 addressed the first Terra Madre symposium organized by Slow Food.
“‘I have always believed that agriculture is not only the oldest, but also the most important of humanity’s productive activities,” Charles told the gathering. “It is the engine of rural employment and the foundation stone of culture, even of civilization itself.”
When the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the future monarch of the United Kingdom and chefs selling $40 plates of osso buco are on your side, it’s hard to avoid charges of elitism.
That criticism still clings to Slow Food, although the time when most of the food establishment seemed to sing from Mr. Petrini’s hymnal is over. Younger eaters — fractured by social media into trend chasers, fiber maxxers and other sects — may not be in the market for world-spanning utopian dreams. Those who are worried that human connections are unraveling may blame big tech, not Big Macs.
About The Author
