Fast lives and fast foods
Isn’t it about time we slowed down?

It is clear our lives have changed quite dramatically over the past half a century. Many of these changes such as, the increasing number of young mothers who now go out to work have had a major impact on our eating habits. On top of this, the pace of life has seemed to get faster especially as information technology becomes more and more developed. With parents rushing around, children staying in watching television and playing computers instead of getting outside, and the birth of the microwave meaning food can be ready in minutes, fewer families are now taking the time to cook and sit down to eat together. The Food Standards agency report that in 1980 an average meal took an hour to prepare compared to only taking 20 minutes in 1999. Ironically as people have had less time to spend on preparing family meals, and with the rise of television celebrity chefs, cooking has now become more popular as a leisure activity.

Research found that between 1998 and 2002, in the UK the demand for ready made meals rose by 44% compared to 29% across Europe. It is suggested that 30% of adults in the UK eat a ready meal more than once a week. The popularity of foods from different cultures has also influenced the convenience food culture, and Indian and Chinese ready meals make up almost half of meals in the chilled cabinets. Over the past decade ready meals have also undergone a change of image, and instead of having a reputation as a lazy convenience food, they are now being marketed as a healthy premium choice.

It is could be argued that we have now adopted a casual and possibly careless approach to what we eat on a daily basis. With food technology replacing home economics in school, it has also been suggested that children are not learning how to cook, and without the right parental guidance, are children likely to end up opting for unhealthy choices? As young people grow up, not knowing any better it is a real possibility we will get trapped in a ready meal/junk food culture.

We are now all too aware of the consequences to our health of eating too many processed foods, however in the first decade of the 21st century; the popularity of convenience foods is likely to continue. Despite being marketed as healthy, ready meals still often have unnecessarily high amounts of saturated fats, salt and sugar, which have been linked to health problems such as strokes, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and dental disease. Diseases that arise from obesity and digestive malfunction are set to rise as fast food replaces traditional ways of eating. Two hundred years ago, there was an evolutionary change when people in Europe on average got taller. Now we are facing another possible evolutionary change, but instead of growing upwards people are growing outwards.

The Slow Food movement was founded in 1989 by journalist Carlo Petrini, and was prompted by the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. The idea was to counteract fast food and fast life, address people’s dwindling interest in food, educate people about where food comes from, and the traditions and the cultures surrounding food. Ultimately their aim is to help people rediscover the joys of eating and the pleasure of good tasting food. The Slow Food movement is founded on the concept of ‘eco- gastronomy’, and how the food choices we make can have an affect globally. The manifesto states:

“We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: fast life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat fast foods. A firm defence of quiet, material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of fast life.”
Carlo simply believes people should be able to eat better quality, tastier and fair food, which has been produced in a way that does not harm the environment, animals, people, or the producers themselves. They set about achieving this in a variety of ways such as; working with and protecting small food producers from being taken over and influenced by industrial standardisation. Among their achievements they have been helping livestock producers to adopt additive free organic methods to produce a higher quality, lower fat, and hopefully tastier beef.
The movement is also very much about promoting slower living, and has lead to the development of ‘Slow Cities’. The requirements to become a ‘Slow City’ include:

· Encouraging good food, with farmers markets and traditional cuisine, and organic farming.
· Urging businesses to adjust their working hours to allow people to enjoy a slow midday meal with their families.
· Prohibiting the use of neon signs, advertising billboards and car alarms.
· Ecological transport links including; pedestrian areas, cycle paths and limits on the number of cars.
· The promotion of recycling.
· The increase of more green space within cities.

Slow food sees children as the Slow Foodies of the future, and much of their work includes being involved in education. Carlo believes it is no good threatening children with the dangers of unhealthy food, and instead takes the approach of trying to make discovering about tastes and nutrition fun. Work within schools includes gardens where children can get hands on experience of eating the food they grow themselves. Today the movement has 100,000 members in 132 countries.

Maybe we should take a leaf out of their book, and stop rushing around, put aside time to cook proper meals, and spend some quality time every day with our families. By stepping out of the fast food culture we will not only be helping the infrastructure that produces organic, natural and wholesome foods expand, we are also more likely to enjoy our food, feel healthier, have more energy and ultimately live longer.

“Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”
Hippocrates