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Series: Slow Food St. Louis
By Jennifer Blome
(KSDK)
- In 1986, when McDonald's announced plans to build a fast food restaurant near the Spanish steps in the heart of Rome, an Italian named Carlo Petrini organized a protest. That protest evolved into the Slow Food Movement
More than 20 years later, the Slow Food Organization is international and has a St. Louis Chapter.
Petrini was recently
included in Time magazine's list of European heroes as a great innovator.
Rebecca Marsh is the founder of the St. Louis chapter.
Slow Food is dedicated to a food system that ensures our food is good,
clean and fair.
"Good" means fresh and locally grown, "clean" means food that is produced in a way that is sensitive to the environment and "fair" means respecting the people who
produce it and paying them what they are worth.
Restaurateur Andy Ayers, who owns Riddles Penultimate in University City, was the first in St. Louis to feature local farmers' names on his menu.
Ayers
said everyone can shop the farmer's markets and support local producers.
"Here is a very small, very personal, political act that you can do," said Ayers.
"You might not be able to sit
around your dining room table and do anything about the war in Iraq or the Supreme Court nominees, but it is something you can do to help the local economy. It is safer, tastier food and completely in the hands of
the consumer."
Tessa Greenspan owns Sappington International Farmer's Market, a grocery store that features produce from local farmers. Greenspan said local produce is less expensive, because it doesn't
cost as much to move it from the farm to your table.
According to a food and energy expert at Cornell University, if every American family ate just one local meal a week (meaning food grown close to where
you live), it would save 1.1 billion barrels of oil a year.
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