slow food nation—excerpt

CARLO PETRINI

SLOW FOODNATIONWHY OUR FOOD SHOULD BE GOOD, CLEAN, AND FAIR

Translated by Clara Furlan and Jonathan Hunt

Foreword by Alice Waters

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“A worthy successor to Brillat-Savarin, Carlo Petrini has reinvented the idea of gastronomy for the

twenty-first century. An important book.”

—Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma

“Carlo Petrini is one of the most important thinkers of our time, not only about what to eat, but also about how to live. This book

is essential reading for anyone who cares about social justice, the environment, and the fundamentals of a good meal.”

—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

First published in paperback in the United States of America in 2013 by

Rizzoli Ex Libris, an imprint of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

300 Park Avenue SouthNew York, NY 10010www.rizzoliusa.com

Originally published in Italian in 2005 as Buono, Pulito e Giustoby Gli struzzi Einaudi

© 2005 Slow Food Editore srl, Bra, Italy

This ebook edition © 2013 Slow Food Editore srl, Bra, Italy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publishers.

2013 2014 2015 2016 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN-13: 978-0-8478-4146-2

The aims of this book are to develop ideas, raise awareness, and arouse passion. If those aims have been achieved,

much of the merit will be due to Carlo Bogliotti, who in recent years has discussed these ideas with me and rendered

valuable assistance in the drafting of the text. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his generous help.

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CONTENTS

Foreword ixIntroduction 1

I. A WORRYING PICTURE 5{ DIARY 1 } PEPPERS AND TULIPS 7{ DIARY 2 } TEHUACÁN 9{ DIARY 3 } LAGUIOLE 13

1. A worrying picture 162. A single destiny: nature, man, and food 193. The Millennium Assessment 204. Restoring food to its central place 225. Agroindustry? 236. A new agriculture for the planet 257. The gastronome 27

II. GASTRONOMY AND NEW GASTRONOMY 29{ DIARY 4} MY GASTRONOMY TEACHERS: ORGANIZERS,

WRITERS, PRODUCERS, AND GOURMETS 311. Gastronomy 35

{ DIARY 5} ALICE 45{ DIARY 6} THE FLORENCE GROUP 48{ DIARY 7} PLEASURE AND HEALTH 53

2. The new gastronomy: a definition 55

III. QUALITY AS AN OBJECTIVE 89{ DIARY 8} THE TASTES OF MY MEMORY 94

1. Good 96{ DIARY 9} THE INDIAN PRAWNS 110

2. Clean 114{ DIARY 10} GREEN CALIFORNIA 129

3. Fair 135

�VII

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IV. THREE IDEAS TO PUT INTO PRACTICE 145{ DIARY 11} NEW YORK AND THE IDEA OF

TASTE WORKSHOPS 1471. Education 149

{ DIARY 12} AT MOROZZO FAIR: THE CAPONS 1622. Co-producers 164

{ DIARY 13} SIR ALBERT HOWARD 1773. Dialogue between realms 1794. Backward in what sense? 191

V. CREATING 193{ DIARY 14} THE SAMI AND THE MONGOLS 196

1. Creating a network 199{ DIARY 15} SHORT CIRCUIT SAN FRANCISCO–

BAJARDO 2102. Bringing about cultural change: a holistic vision of theworld of gastronomes 215

{ DIARY 16} CHIAPAS, ROCKEFELLER, AND THE SMALL

FARMERS OF PUGLIA 2223. Creating a fair and sustainable food distribution system 227

{ DIARY 17} RURAL GENEROSITY 2384. Creating a new system of values for the network of gastronomes 240

Conclusion 246Appendix: From the Manifesto on the

Future of Food 251Afterword: 10 Things Every American Can Do to

Strengthen Our Food Communities 255Bibliography 256Notes 259

VIII�CONTENTS

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FOREWORDAlice Waters

When my friends and I opened the doors of our new restaurantChez Panisse in 1971, we thought of ourselves as agents ofseduction whose mission it was to change the way people ate.We were reacting against the uniformity and blandness of thefood of the day. We soon discovered that the best-tasting foodcame from local farmers, ranchers, foragers, and fishermen whowere committed to sound and sustainable practices. Years later,meeting Carlo Petrini for the first time, I realized that we hadbeen a Slow Food restaurant from the start. Like Carlo, we weretrying to connect pleasure and politics—by delighting our cus-tomers we could get them to pay attention to the politics of food.

Carlo Petrini is the founder of the Slow Food movementand an astonishing visionary. Unlike me, he grew up in a part ofthe world with a deeply traditional way of eating and living,where he learned an abiding love for the simple, life-affirmingpleasures of the table. When he saw this way of eating in Italystart to disappear, he decided to do something about it. SlowFood began as an ad hoc protest against fast-food restaurants inRome, but it has grown into an international movement built onthe principles he sets forth in these pages.

Carlo has put big ideas together in sparkling, strong lan-guage that has survived translation from his robust Italian andthat breathes easily and naturally. His voice is, above all, that of aperson whose senses are expertly attuned, and whose mind is inconstant exercise. It is a voice that is also irresistibly engaging.His argument has both the warm familial resonance of yourfavorite uncle’s storytelling and the bracing intellectual rigor ofyour most inspiring teacher; its tone—now high, now low; nowdry, now droll—is that of the calm and hopeful voice of reasonitself. You will like this voice.

Most Americans are put off by the word gastronomy; itevokes either gastroenterology or, at best, gourmet pretention.But Carlo heroically appropriates and redefines the word.

�IX

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By gastronomy he wants us to understand a new science, whichhe defines as the study of our food and all the natural and man-made systems that produce it. It is therefore nothing less thanthe study of our place on earth and our survival as a species. It isa science far more comprehensive than any of the traditionalsocial sciences. Indeed, because gastronomy relates to the studyof every subject taught in school, it can organize and enliven thecurriculum as no other subject can. And if economics is the dis-mal science, gastronomy is certainly the cheerful one—becauseof its assertion of a universal right to pleasure.

The vision he sets forth in these pages is of the planet as anark shared by all its inhabitants. The lifeline with which Carlowould bring us aboard is woven from three conceptual strands.He argues that, at every level, our food supply must meet thethree criteria of quality, purity, and justice. Our food must bebuono, pulito, e giusto—words that resonate with more solem-nity in Italian than do their literal English counterparts. Ourfood should be good, and tasty to eat; it should be clean, pro-duced in ways that are humane and environmentally sound; andthe system by which our food is provided must be economicallyand socially fair to all who labor in it. Carlo’s great insight is thatwhen we seek out food that meets these criteria, we are nolonger mere consumers but co-producers, who are bearing ourfair share of the costs of producing good food and creatingresponsible communities.

Carlo’s argument moves gracefully (not surprisingly, he is avery good dancer) in a way that transforms his curiosity, delight,and outrage into something like a cross between a tango and atreasure hunt. Carlo persuades us that it is the education of oursenses that allows us to experience the beauty and meaningaround us in the world. Few thinkers have been able to convey thedelight of enlightenment so well. Carlo argues that such enlight-enment can be available to every person on the planet. Thanks tohis generosity and humanity and his disarming charm, it is an argu-ment that never becomes hortatory or strident. Above all, it is theargument I have been waiting for, an irrefutable demonstrationthat making the right decisions about food can change the world.

X�FOREWORD

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INTRODUCTION

There are still people who dismiss gastronomes like me as abunch of selfish gluttons who couldn’t care less about the worldaround them. They misunderstand: it is precisely the gas-tronome’s skills—which range from a finely tuned sense of taste(a skill that has deep implications for our odorless and tastelessworld) to knowledge of food production—that make him carevery much about the world around him, make him feel that he isin a sense a co-producer of food, a participant in a shared destiny.

This common destiny becomes all the clearer if we bear inmind that all human beings live on the same earth and take theirnourishment from it. So this book will begin with a survey of theworld’s present perilous state of health, which is mainly due tothe systems by which food is produced and consumed.

So, too, the new gastronome must assert his expertise inthe analysis of these systems. Drawing on his long experience inthe quest for the good, for culinary pleasure, he discovers thatthere is also a different world of production and consumption,parallel to the currently dominant one, which contains the seedsof a better global system.

However, gastronomic science and the skills that derivefrom it have always been misunderstood, maligned, and margin-alized for a variety of reasons—this is partly the gastronome’sown fault, as we shall see. So mere assertion will not be suffi-cient: we will have to redefine gastronomic science, give it thedignity it deserves, a new dignity. In attempting to do this in thenext section of the book—an attempt that begins with a histori-cal analysis and ends with a reasoned definition of a “new gas-tronomy”—the gastronome will cover the whole range ofdisciplines in this complex subject. He will make no claim toomniscience; indeed, he will not hesitate to call on the aid ofanyone who can help him.

At this point, before moving on to the everyday act of eat-ing, he will have to erect some fences and try to find some com-

�1

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mon factors that underlie the diversity (biological, cultural, geo-graphical, religious, and productive) of complex gastronomy:above all, a new and precise definition of quality—good, clean,and fair. It is a simple definition for a very complex concept:three interdependent, essential criteria for judging the accept-ability of any particular food.

Once that has been achieved, the gastronome will be ableto start discussing commitments: the necessity to keep learning,to respect traditional knowledge and heed its teachings, to feelthat he is a new kind of individual, what we might call a “co-producer.” The co-producer/gastronome shares ideas andknowledge, shares in the quest for quality and in the quest forhappiness, for a new dignity for the countryside and the peoplewho produce food. The gastronome shares his essence as a gas-tronome—shares it with other co-producers, with producers,with chefs, and with anyone who is involved in complex gastron-omy in any way; together, they all share the dual principle whichis summed up in two fundamental statements (which will beexplained later): “eating is an agricultural act” and “producingmust be a gastronomical act.”

This sharing will open people’s eyes to an important sectorof society which has been underestimated and ignored because itis not in line with the dominant mentality—a sector of societymade up of true gastronomes (according to the new definitionthat I will give) who wish to build and change reality. And if that iswhat we all want, why not follow a plan? Why not pool our forces?

So I will end the book by discussing the idea of a network ofgastronomes embracing the same values and commitments forall, but including a range of completely different human experi-ences. This network draws strength from its very diversity andmay perhaps succeed in making the world a better place, or atleast in improving the quality of our food and our lives. It will doso by sticking to principles that are not a mere display of goodintentions, but a genuine desire to work for the common good.Today, this good is the most important of all causes, a sourcefrom which we can draw prosperity for ourselves and for futuregenerations, in a world that seems to be drifting aimlessly.

2�SLOW FOOD NATION


If we summarize the main points of our project, this book maynot appear to be too utopian:

• the gastronome examines the problems that are cur-rently afflicting the world and traces their causes to thefood system;

• the gastronome asserts his ability to interpret and influ-ence this system through a complex science, which hethirsts for and which he wants others to share in as muchas possible, for he is not omniscient and cannot copewith this complexity on his own;

• the gastronome demands a quality which is recognizableto all and which can improve our lives—the lives of all ofus, for he cannot exist in isolation; he educates himselfwith others, learns from and acquires knowledge fromothers, exchanges with others, enjoys together with oth-ers, and feels solidarity with others.

• the gastronome will find that many others in the worldshare his principles and are united by the same desire. Tojoin forces, to make those forces readily available to all, isthe most natural thing to do in order to ensure survivaland happiness for himself and his fellows. To change theworld a little, since he is not the only person who wants todo so, not the only person who hungers for change.

I would like to end this introduction with a final thought:that phrase “to change the world a little” should be takentogether with a Piedmontese expression, per si quatr dí che‘ruma da vivi, “for these four days that are granted to us on thisearth.” For these four days that are granted to us on this earth,can we not be generous? Generous to ourselves, by practicinghonest pleasure; generous to those who strive to do some goodin this world; and generous to all the other people, who cannotbut share in our destiny?

INTRODUCTION�3


The improvident, in the face of their “four days,” do notgive much thought to the future, to what will happen after theyhave gone. They consume, burn up, destroy, and enjoy as muchas they can without a thought for the common good.

I am convinced that during these days that are granted tous on this earth—a mere moment in the history of humankind—we should try to live happily and humbly and work as hard as wecan, in the healthy conviction that during those days we really dohave a chance, each in our own small way, to contribute to thebuilding of a happier future.



CHAPTER I I I

QUALITY ASAN OBJECTIVE

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QUALITY AS AN OBJECTIVE�91

The word “quality,” like “taste,” “local,” and “traditional,” is oneof the most abused terms in culinary literature. With the grow-ing awareness among the public of the need for a healthy diet,“quality” is demanded and invoked for various reasons by every-one involved in agricultural and food production, and is widelyused as a means of promoting a product.

The rise in popularity of the term is a fairly recent phenom-enon, which came about mainly as a result of food scandals suchas mad cow disease, dioxin-contaminated chicken, and variousother dangers that have occurred periodically in the agriculturaland food system since the late 1980s. Certainly, a more recentpart of the credit—or blame?—for the spread of the word isundoubtedly due to the relative success of traditional products,generally produced with a heightened concern for the finalresult in terms of taste and originality. But it was the scandals inparticular that opened the eyes of the average consumer (therecent success of certain “minor” producers, achieved in theface of current trends, proves this), shocking the general publicbecause they entered homes, affected local farmers, and intro-duced fear and uncertainty—due to a profound lack of informa-tion—into the act of shopping. No media campaign in favor ofquality would have been so effective, but soon the term becamea feather to put in any cap, a term with infinite connotations thatcould be used in the most disparate contexts.

In the early 1980s, “quality” usually implied a concern withsuperior production methods and organoleptic characteristics,and was intimately linked with the idea of status, in accordancewith a still very elitist concept of gastronomical knowledge.Toward the end of the century, however, the need to “democra-tize” the term after the food scandals (and the market success ofthe “local” and the “traditional”) soon led to it acquiring asense—warmly approved by the world of production—which ineffect associates quality with hygienic-sanitary safety or at leastequates quality with “local” and “traditional”: “this product is notharmful to health, and does not kill, therefore it is a qualityproduct”; or “this product is traditional in our nation and in thisparticular town, therefore it is a quality product.”


This highly reductive concept is readily traceable to theintellectual tendencies imposed by technocratic and reduction-ist thought: when defining quality became a matter of urgency,people tried to regulate it on the basis of calculations or mini-mum quantifiable measures and requirements, which wereoften superficial. The most blatant example is provided by theEuropean Union (EU), whose response to the demandsprompted by the food scandals was to introduce an extremelyrestrictive type of regulation that had been under considerationsince the early 1990s: HACCP (Hazard Analysis and CriticalControl Points).

HACCP is a method first developed in the United Statesby NASA in 1959 to guarantee the quality of the food that waseaten in space programs; it was adopted by the EU as a way ofcontrolling food production in 1994 and incorporated intoItalian legislation in 1999. It consists of a set of norms and proce-dures for analyzing the risks of the contamination of products,from raw materials to the final product. It is a very restrictiveand detailed method which, though possibly sustainable by thefood industry with huge but proportionate investments, isimpossible to sustain for small producers, especially those thatuse traditional or non-mechanized methods and tools of produc-tion. The main effect of HACCP has been an intolerableincrease in red tape, a considerable rise in costs to meet stan-dards, a standardization of production to the advantage of thefood industry, and greater power of harassment for the control-ling bodies. The vigorous opposition of some associations—SlowFood prominent among them—and of many small producerslater induced the EU to soften its stance, allowing proportionateexemptions for those kinds of production that for structural rea-sons are unable to comply with these hygienic-sanitary criteria,which in fact only correspond to the characteristics of industrialmethods of food production.36

This predilection for a quantitative idea of food quality—which had the immediate effect of equating quality withsafety—went even further, producing more complex attempts tocalculate and define quality. But these attempts were aban-



doned as soon as they came up against the infinite number ofvariables which the definition encounters. What characteristicsmust a cheese have in order to be considered a quality product?Must it be pristine, well-preserved, healthy, clean, fragrant, con-taining the right amounts of fat, salt, and dry residue? To thetaste, it still might seem dull, even unpleasant: quality cannot becalculated; there is no such thing as objective quality.

But there is such a thing as comparative quality: must wetherefore resign ourselves to relativism?

Certainly not. We can describe quality, and we can try todefine it by looking for general requirements, criteria that areopen to interpretation case by case. Quality is a complex con-cept, arising from the complexity of gastronomy itself and there-fore from numerous parameters; we must accept it and turn it toour own advantage. The subjectivity of quality must be a causeof orientation, not of confusion.

We may begin by saying that quality is a commitment that ismade by the producer and the buyer, a constant endeavor, a polit-ical act (that may seem a provocative statement, but I will explainthe reasons behind it later), and a cultural act; and that in order toescape from the impasse of its relativity, quality demands a life-long education in food and taste, as well as respect for the earth,the environment, and the people who produce the food.

Perhaps this can provide us with our general criteria, or atleast with ones from which we can start, applying them duringthe phase of gastronomic choice, when we purchase a foodproduct: the phase of the search—without any rhetoric—fortaste, which involves three ideas. The latter are also the threeessential preconditions which must be met before we can saythat a particular product is a quality product and from which wemay start to discuss personal or collective preferences, andtherefore relative quality.

The three notions are good, clean, and fair—three mutu-ally interdependent and indispensable concepts.



{ DIARY 8 } THE TASTES OF MY MEMORY

In my long experience as a gastronome, I have given hun-dreds of interviews both as a critic and as the president ofSlow Food. In all these interviews, there have been veryfew occasions when the interviewer did not ask: “What’syour favorite dish?” or “What’s your ideal meal?” It isrepeated like a kind of mantra, and it shows how often cul-ture and gastronomic journalism become banal and con-centrate reductively on two elements alone: recipes andrecommended restaurants. I confess that I find the ques-tion very irritating, especially if I am trying to describe thecomplexity of gastronomic science in the interview. Overthe years, however, I have learned to relax and not worrytoo much about it, replying that my preferences dependon the place and situation I find myself in. But the factremains that the question is an irritating commonplacewhich does justice neither to the gastronome’s curiositynor to the seriousness of the subject.

What is no joking matter, at the level of personaltastes, is the gastronome’s formative experience, which ishighly individual and rooted in the childhood of each oneof us. This is what makes the adventure of food wonderful,because for each of us it has a different point of departure,which can be traced back to the community and familyinto which we were born. I, for example, come from south-ern Piedmont, and began to learn about food in the post-war years, between 1949 and 1958, the period which hasbeen recognized by the Italian National Institute ofNutrition as the time when Italians had the healthiestdiet—not because people were affluent (they were not),but simply because of the quality of the food.

Coming from a family on the borderline between theworking class and the lower middle class, my roots lie in aculinary tradition that derived from what can still bedescribed as a subsistence economy, and of which mypaternal grandmother was a representative. My grand-



mother’s patience in producing food and teaching you tolove it was very common among the women of those days,who could make profitable use of the scanty materials thatthey had at their disposal, preparing unforgettable dishesin conditions of great economic hardship.

That is why certain tastes have remained etched onmy memory—the first tastes, always linked to particularmoments, which remained vivid reference points foreverything that came later.

I remember the afternoon snacks consisting of somad’aj, a slice of bread spread with a clove of garlic and a lit-tle salt and oil, and toasted on the stove: too rich for a childat four o’clock in the afternoon. Nowadays, no one wouldever dream of preparing such a snack, but that was my firstexperience of garlic, a food it is always difficult to persuadechildren to eat. Then there was Sunday lunch, which con-sisted of meat-filled ravioli (le raviole, in Piedmontese),the meat being in fact the week’s leftovers. My grand-mother liked to add rice to it, and the lightness of the pastagave the dish a unique consistency and a richness of flavoryou would never have expected from leftovers—a realSunday feast.

There was another dish, which was the quintessenceof poverty and which I have never seen anywhere elsesince: rice boiled in milk, which was the food of theevening, when you tried to make a virtue of necessity. Andfinally there was rolatine, thin scraps of meat rolled arounda filling of eggs, vegetables, cheese, and breadcrumbs, andserved with a typical Piedmontese salsa verde.

It is strange to see how all these dishes, which arepart of my makeup, are rarely made any more, except insome restaurants that recreate the gastronomic traditionwith scholarly accuracy. Those tastes are in my head, but Ihave seldom come across them in later years.

I feel the same dismay when I no longer find goodbread on our tables, but odorless and tasteless white rolls,lacking the flavor I remember in those loaves made with



sour dough and live yeast. Besides, a copious consumptionof bread at meals is part of the history of Italian cuisine,whose roots lie in an agricultural society. I have alwaysbeen amused by the fact that when I go to France peopletell me that the Italians’ idea of an hors d’oeuvre is breadand water. But it is part of our flesh and blood; today, Ireally miss good bread, and it is always a pleasant surpriseto be served excellent bread with a meal. Many restaurantsin California, for example, offer delicious bread.

Food changes with time and so do traditions, whichare not immutable; but a gastronome’s gustatory-olfactorymemory is like a bank, a filing cabinet that preservesknowledge and flavors which accompany him through life.That is why a constant training of his sensoriality can onlyhelp the gastronome and the culture of which he is part:the more conscious this memory is, the less gastronomicknowledge will be lost in the future.

1. GOOD

Trying to define the concept of quality by saying that a product,in order to be considered a quality product, must be good doesnot solve the problem of relativism. “Good” is what one likes,and what one likes should be related to the sensorial sphere,which is strongly influenced by personal, cultural, historical,socioeconomic, and contingent factors. It is difficult to findobjectivity in all this. In fact, however, it is by renouncing objec-tivity, the desire to establish a rule that is valid for everyone, thatone can arrive at an understanding of what is good. What is goodin gastronomy is good if two conditions hold: first, that a productcan be linked with a certain naturalness which respects theproduct’s original characteristics as much as possible; secondly,that it produces recognizable (and pleasant) sensations whichenable one to judge it at a particular moment, in a particular



place, and within a particular culture. What is good for the pres-ent writer is not necessarily good for a twenty-year-oldLondoner, a Mongolian shepherd, a Brazilian samba dancer, or aThai doctor, let alone for a Masai from Tanzania. And in a hun-dred years, if I could still be here to taste it, it might not be goodfor me either.

In defining what is good, two kinds of subjective factors arecrucial: taste—which is personal and linked to the sensorialsphere of each one of us—and knowledge—which is culturaland linked to the environment and to the history of communi-ties, techniques, and places.

1.1 SensorialityThe knowledge of the senses is scientific, in the classical sense ofthe term—that is to say, it has an objective basis, though a veryweak one—because it is the way we perceive through sensorial-ity: it is a physical, physiological fact, which is natural in ahealthy person.

The study of the human body on the one hand and thedecoding of tasting techniques on the other have made it possi-ble to explain how our senses function, how perceptual activityoccurs and how it becomes cognitive. The tastes, the colors, thetextures perceptible to the touch, the sounds, and the primarysmells have all been identified and described.

The serious tasting of a food product, before one expressesa value judgment on it, passes through the most meticulousdescription of its characteristics: visual, olfactory, tactile, andgustatory. Some perfectionists even take pains to explain theinfluence of the sense of hearing on the total experience of taste.It has to be said that this approach can be described as a kind ofaesthetics of eating and drinking, which already introduces a cul-tural element,37 but the point of departure remains objective;only the value that is subsequently given to this or that taste, tothis or that smell, changes.

The history of cooking comes to our aid to explain how theconcept of the good is variable and how it has changed pro-



foundly over the course of our history, completely overturningjudgments. The ancient Romans were exceedingly fond ofgarum, a sauce made from fish entrails steeped in oil and vari-ous spices, a condiment we would abhor if it were still producedtoday; and yet, a very similar one is very common and muchappreciated in present-day Thailand. There have been periodsin history when the sour triumphed, others when the sweet waspreferred, others still when the sweet, salty, and sour were usedsimultaneously; there have been periods when spices and arti-fice with respect to natural taste were synonyms of good, andothers when a stronger need was felt for the final dish to respectas closely as possible the original taste of the raw materials.

At any rate, this variability, which we might describe as“evolutionary,” and which is always linked to environmental con-ditions, does not mean that there is no objective way of recogniz-ing flavors, the sensorial basis of all our approaches to food. Andif we take the historical perspective, this basis has never been somuch under threat as it is today. Human sensoriality is attackedby the multiplication of stimuli, by the diminution of the amountof time we have to select and perceive them, and by certainmethods of industrial production which alter the natural flavorsand end up deceiving us, indeed atrophying our overexposedand increasingly ill-educated senses.

Re-educating the senses and keeping them in constanttraining becomes the principal gastronomic act, the primary andindispensable task that enables us to recognize quality. If we can-not identify flavor on the basis of objective data, we cannotachieve knowledge. In this way we lose pleasure, our freedom ofchoice, and any chance of directly or indirectly influencing thedecisions of producers. In so doing, we renounce quality from theoutset and are compelled to trust those who sell it to us as such.

But it would be wrong to trust them too much; from thispoint of view, our regained and educated senses have a very impor-tant political role. The coarsening of our senses is a surrender tothe ruling model, which does not want us to be pleasure-loving,satisfied people but unfeeling cogs in the juggernaut propelledtoward profit (and the grave). The dulling of the senses to which



we are subjected is both a consequence and a contributory causeof the proliferation of a system, a mode of thought and production,which has nothing in common with what food ought to be.Reappropriating the senses is the first step toward imagining a dif-ferent system capable of respecting man as a worker of the land, asa producer, as a consumer of food and resources, and as a politicaland moral entity. To reappropriate one’s senses is to reappropriateone’s own life and to cooperate with others in creating a betterworld, where everyone has the right to pleasure and knowledge.

1.2 TasteTaste is both flavor and knowledge, sapore and sapere in Italian:the alliteration of the two terms says a lot about the close con-nection that exists between the perceptual and cultural spheres.Taste changes according to whether you are rich or poor,whether there is abundance or famine, whether you live in a for-est or in a metropolis. But for everyone, taste is the right totransform their own daily sustenance into pleasure.

This natural tendency has not always corresponded to cri-teria of cheapness with respect to costs and benefits: it may be amatter of expediency, as Marvin Harris maintains, but eating aparticular kind of food does not necessarily mean that oneappreciates it, as Jean-Louis Flandrin has pointed out.38 The richalways seem to have taken expensiveness as the main criterion oftheir culinary choices:39 to them, the rarer, and therefore themore costly, the product, the better it is. The greater diffusion ofwealth nowadays—if not in the absolute sense, at least in thesense related to the cost of food—combined with the sensorialignorance that is becoming ever more widespread, have also ledto the criterion of expensiveness, only now it is inversely propor-tional to, and more unconscious than, elitist ostentation, butequally inexpedient: the cheaper a product is, the more I eat it,never mind if I deprive myself of pleasure and if it does damageto me, to the ecosystem, and to those who produce it.

But leaving aside all these anthropological and economicconsiderations, taste remains the crucial factor in establishing



the goodness of a particular food. Its formation depends on theculture and the economic situation, and in light of these factors,it is the gastronome’s task to succeed in defining what is good forthe world of today.

As I have already said, however, it is not easy to arrive at adefinition that is “good” for everyone: the variety of factors thatare involved makes generalization difficult. The study of what isgood, therefore, necessarily restricts the field to a single cultureand a single social group. It sets limits (spatial, cultural, andsocial) and confronts us with all the complexity of multidiscipli-nary gastronomic science. But this very complexity and this cul-tural diversity, if accepted fully and open-mindedly, can enableus to clear away many factors which are unimportant (and veryrelative), so that we can single out those elements that occur inall cultures, a common point of departure. One of these ele-ments might be, for example, a preference for the artificial or forthe natural, which I consider to be a good starting point. Otherrival factors belonging to other contexts will be superimposed onmacrocriteria of this kind.

Another preliminary remark should be made: in order todevelop these arguments, I will refer to the history of our tastehere in the West, but I would like to state clearly at the outsetthat I totally reject Eurocentrism and any suggestion that ourgastronomic culture is superior to others.

I start from “us” simply because we have more historicalsources at our disposal, and many other scholars have givendetailed descriptions of these dynamics. It has been demon-strated, for example, that Western history has been character-ized by a cyclical swing between the artificial and the natural.Artifice was preferred in ancient Roman, medieval, and Ren -aissance cuisines, when cooking was perceived as a combinator-ial art whose purpose was to change the natural taste of food asmuch as possible. But to delve less far back in time, the samealternating prevalence of the artificial and the natural is foundeven in the more recent development of haute cuisine; in themid-1970s, there was a new vogue for nouvelle cuisine, whichput the technical ability of the chef before all else as the key ele-



ment in the success of a great dish, a dish that could be consid-ered good. During this historical phase, the raw material wasdepreciated in its importance with respect to the good: accord-ing to the supporters of nouvelle cuisine, even the worst point ofdeparture could be transformed into something exceptional bythe technical ability and creativity of the cook.

After only a decade, in the mid-1980s, the popularity ofnew chefs such as Alain Ducasse inspired a new school whoseaim was essentially the quest for excellent raw materials, whichit held to be the only indisputable factor on which the chef’sability can legitimately intervene, to present the originality ofthe flavors in all their splendor. Then came the Spanish schoolled by Ferran Adrià, who with an injection of flamboyant andhighly technical creativity reintroduced artifice to the kitchen:consistencies which change and cannot be traced back to theoriginal appearance of the ingredients, flavors which do not cor-respond to appearances or smells. This continual and increas-ingly provocative game found intellectual justification in thework of Adrià, the only true innovator of the school (to call him agenius would not be an exaggeration), but became an exercise insterility and bad taste in the hands of most of his followers.

Today, there is a continuing debate between this trendtoward the technicalizing of cooking and the theories of thosewho favor a revival—or an adaptation to modern tastes—of tra-ditional cooking. The traditionalists look to the work of thosechefs who have in some way been inspired by these traditionalcuisines in the sincerity with which they attempt to treat theoriginal and natural tastes of the products. The tension betweenthese two worlds is great, and the antagonism is exacerbated bythe exigencies of a world so global in thrust that it is in danger ofself-destruction.

It is increasingly obvious that any movement in a certaindirection in a society like ours immediately prompts an opposingmovement. When fast food became universal, Slow Food foundits raison d’être; when globalization exercised its homogenizingpower over taste, at once reactions sprang up which regardedlocalism and diversity as a value. If artifice comes into fashion,



there is immediately a revival of the “natural” school. And in themidst of all this, the exchanges and amalgamations grow moreand more uninhibited: fusion cuisine, for example, which blendstogether different products and culinary traditions purely on thebasis of flavors, defying all territorial and cultural boundaries,can either lead to complete chaos (con-fusion), which com-pletely distorts the value of the raw materials, or have the posi-tive effect of introducing new cultural stimuli into the evolutionof collective taste, spreading the knowledge of new products bymeans of respectful and pertinent combinations.

In this chaotic and rapidly changing situation, it is impor-tant to take up a position in favor of “natural” taste: for in the wel-ter of stimuli that surrounds us, taste must first and foremost beclearly identifiable, both as flavor and as knowledge. Rejectingartifice for artifice’s sake is an act of responsibility, a summons togo back to reality. Few artifices can justify a knowledge which isso great as to eclipse flavor (as in the case of Adrià).

1.3 NaturalnessBearing in mind the characteristics assumed today by almost allagricultural food production of the industrial type—which isvery influential on and influenced by technicalized and “unnat-ural” thought—and leaving aside any discussion of the validity ofthe techniques at the center of the debate, there remains todaythe question of raw materials and respect for them. This is thefirst factor in discussing the good.

Raw materials and respect for them: these are the mini-mum conditions on which to construct an axiom whereby thegoodness of a product is proportional to its naturalness. The nat-ural integrity of the raw material is what makes possible the cul-tivation and perception of the good.

At this point, we need to clarify what we mean by natural.Here we are discussing a general system, the method of produc-tion in its entirety. Natural means not using too many elementsthat are extraneous and artificial with respect to the system /environment / mankind / raw material / processing: no additives



and chemical preservatives, no artificial or supposedly “natural”flavorings; no technologies that subvert the naturalness of theprocess of working, raising (in the case of livestock), growing,cooking, et cetera. The raw materials must be healthy, whole, asfree as possible from chemical treatments and intensive proce-dures. They must be treated with processes that are veryrespectful of their original characteristics. The quality of acheese, for example, is intimately linked with the quality of themilk that is used, and the milk will be good to the extent that thefeed given to the animal that produced it was good. The samegoes for meat, which will be good if the breeding of the animalhas respected the criteria of naturalness: no growth accelerators,no hypercaloric or antibiotic-laced fodder. The animals shouldlead a stress-free life. Great respect should be paid for theirwell-being. In other words they should lead as “natural” as possi-ble a life while they are being raised: adequate space if they arekept in stalls—but preferably they will be put out to pasture;very short journeys, made only when necessary and withoutthem being crammed into trucks; no violence. It is not just aquestion of not being cruel to animals—all this is also a guaran-tee that the final product will be better: stress and trauma have asignificant effect on the sensory qualities of meat.

But to what extent can human technology be reconciledwith “naturalness”? Every agricultural technique, even the mostarchaic, introduces an element of artifice into nature. The samecan be said of transformation (whether by cooking or other pro-cessing method), for it is true that with absolute naturalness theprocess of producing our food would not be “cultural”: our dietwould not be very different from that of animals, which eat whatthey find in nature without modifying it.

In this case, as in other areas of life, common sense shouldprevail: a technique is natural if it respects nature, does notabuse it, does not waste it, does not irreparably alter its balance.From this point of view, one may cite the example of wine pro-duction: is using a barrique to enhance its flavor in the cellarnatural? It is certainly more natural than a concentrator, whichalters the biochemical values of the grapes produced that year.



The barrique is a cellar technique that does not alter the wine’s“naturalness.” The same is true of thinning out in the vineyard(the technique of eliminating some bunches of grapes to con-centrate the sugars in the remaining ones and thereby improvethe quality of the grapes at the expense of quantity): this couldbe seen as an attempt to alter the productive season by externalintervention. Yet thinning out is certainly more natural than theuse of a concentrator or chemical treatments on the plants, forit is part of a process, a human know-how which is consistentwith the “naturalness” of things, and it does not compromiseproduction—indeed, it improves it without putting too muchstress on the soil and the vegetation. A similar comparison couldbe made between, on the one hand, the techniques of cross-fertilization and varietal improvement through selection (thefirst is used in botany, the second by farmers and nurserymenafter each harvest), and, on the other hand, the creation ofhybrids invented for productive reasons or, even worse, thecreation of genetically modified organisms—for the same pro-ductive purposes. (Surely the reader does not believe the liethat GMOs will solve the problem of world famine? But we willreturn to this point later).

This, then, is another essential prerequisite in our quest forthe good: the product must meet the criteria of naturalnessthroughout the production process which brings food from thefield to our tables.

1.4 PleasureThe good is what we like. Pleasure has always been the gas-tronome’s joy and torment. On the one hand, it is undeniable: ifwe strive for the good, we do so in order to experience, andenable others to experience, culinary pleasure. On the otherhand, it is evident that those parts of Europe where a gastro-nomic culture has developed are the same ones that have moststrongly felt the influence of the Catholic religion and whosedominant moral code rejects pleasure and associates it withvice, sin, and damnation. At the same time, the militant charac-



teristic of certain political ideologies has considered the questfor gastronomic pleasure as succumbing to one of the worstbourgeois vices.

The enjoyment of food, which is constantly sought with theutmost ingenuity even where food is in short supply, is a physio-logical, instinctive matter, but one that is somehow rejected byour society. Gastronomy has not attained the status of a science,nor even really been taken seriously, because it is a subject thatconcerns pleasure.

This underlying problem has impeded the quest for thegood, and has been a perfect accomplice of that industrialprocess of food production that has depreciated the importanceof quality so much that it has almost disappeared (or mergedwith different concepts, such as hygienic-sanitary safety); as aresult most people have become accustomed to highly artificialaromas, tastes, and sensations and are unable to choose the goodbecause they cannot recognize it. The rejection or concealmentof culinary pleasure has meant that the cutting of the umbilicalcord that tied us to the soil and its fruits has been painless formost of us. Yet that break has separated producers from con-sumers, excluding the latter from any phase of the productionprocess during which taste is created, flavor can be respected,and knowledge is fundamental.

The pleasure principle is fundamental. The pleasureprinciple is natural: everyone has a right to pleasure, as we sawearlier. To reaffirm this principle unambiguously and withoutany psychoanalytical implications is in the first place an act ofcivility. Since pleasure is a human right, it must be guaranteedfor everyone, so we must teach people to recognize it, to cre-ate the conditions whereby “naturally” good products are pro-ducible everywhere.

This aim immediately eliminates the erroneous idea thatgastronomy is the prerogative of a wealthy elite and that it mustbe in some way separated from food per se. That is like sayingthat only those who can afford it have a right to pleasure, andthat everyone else, the poor, must simply eat to keep themselvesalive and cannot experience pleasure.



This is not the case, and pleasure is always linked, indissol-ubly, with knowledge, which is itself another right: knowledge ofthe sensory characteristics of a product both when it is consid-ered a raw material and after it has been processed; knowledgeof the process that transforms it, so that we can appreciate itsvalidity; knowledge of the characteristics of products that aresimilar but of different provenance and made with differenttechniques; knowledge of ourselves and our sensibilities, whichmust be communicated and shared with others.

Pleasure sought and expressed is contagious. It restores allthe body’s vitality and stimulates the intelligence to go beyondthe rules of the old gastronomic code; it is a challenge to allthose food-related disciplines (such as nutritional science)which often declare, in their inward-looking way, that they cando without it, whereas in fact without it they would have no rai-son d’être. Pleasure should be taught to children, adults, and theaged all over the world, because it is the only thing that givesmeaning to the daily work of the new gastronome. It must neverbe introspection closed within the personal sphere, but rather aconscious philosophy of life which permeates and guides everygastronomic act, from cultivating to eating, from shopping tocooking, from the study of the food system to scientific researchand development programs for those parts of the world wherefood is scarce.

Pleasure in this sense is a philosophy of the good, whichworks for the good and knows how to enjoy it.

1.5 The good as an aimBecause it is subjective, the good can be used as an instrumentof division between social classes and peoples; and also of cul-tural division on the part of those who have an interest in thegood not becoming too well known, or of those who, althoughtheir intentions are noble, believe that their “own” good is the“only” good and that it is applicable to everyone.

If I say that I seek the good, what I mean is that I seek whatis good for me, what is good according to my culture, but at the



same time I hope that everyone all over the world will find whatis good for their cultures.

The Italians, for example, have many traditional dishesbased on rabbit, but to many Americans eating rabbit is an inhu-mane and disgusting act, because the animal is regarded as apet, like a dog. It is hard to explain to an American that the wildrabbit of Ischia, if bred in the traditional way, acquires superiorsensory characteristics. For many Americans, rabbit is not evenedible! The same can be said of the brus which I mentioned ear-lier: not even the inhabitants of other parts of Piedmont wouldconsider this product good, with that smell which many woulddescribe as a stink! Perhaps it is not objectively good, but it ispart of my culture, of my memory, and there are techniques formaking it better or worse. Young people, for example, eventhose from southern Piedmont, where brus is still produced—though only in very small quantities—no longer have the rightcultural background to appreciate it. They can, however, betrained to appreciate it by understanding the reasons why it isproduced, why it acquires certain sensory characteristics, andwhich are the right ones; and all this because it belongs to theculture they were born into. But you cannot force them to eat it;it is a taste that is dying out, for tastes do evolve through history.

When I met some entomophagous women from BurkinaFaso who dry certain larvae in the way they learned from theirmothers, because in such a poor country insects and larvae are areadily available source of protein, they gave me a little bag ofthose caterpillars; out of politeness, but also out of curiosity, Itried one. Objectively speaking, I did not find anything that cor-responded to my categories of “good” (though when I wasserved some similar larvae, fried, in Mexico City I found themdelicious). To my personal taste, those insects are bad, but sincethey are important for that culture—they are part of the tradi-tion, they meet the criteria of naturalness, their consumptionhelps agriculture because they are parasites, and what is morethey improve the diet of the burkinabé (who love them)—I mustsay that they are good. Just as brus is good and the wild rabbit ofIschia, which is almost extinct, is good. This is the absolute rela-



tivity of the good: according to culture, according to “natural-ness,” according to sensory characteristics.

Taking this relativity in toto, the concept may thereforemean in the first instance respect for other cultures, for diver-sity. This respect must guide every contact we have, every inter-vention we make in order to support or exchange with others,every tasting of food we make when we are in another country.No one has the right to judge someone else’s food on the basis oftheir own “cultural” taste: if we accept the description of food asa language, it becomes a means of communication, and in orderto judge it we must learn to recognize the categories of the goodwhich have codified it, as a language, in that particular culture.We must learn other culinary languages.

This respect is difficult to put into practice and is the firstobstacle and source of error when we try to organize interna-tional interventions to protect or support products, agricultures,or social groups connected with food. Usually, the nongovern-mental organizations, the associations and institutions that workin these fields, are the products of Western culture and must notpresume to impose their mode of thought—their taste—on oth-ers. They cannot even afford to do it in good faith. Even SlowFood, which through its international Presidia strives to defendsmall producers all over the world, finds it very difficult andmakes a great effort to learn about the cultures where it intendsto operate. If we strive to promote sustainability, naturalness,and local tradition, we also work to promote quality, and if westart from an erroneous concept of the good, we will fail.

In conclusion, the good as an objective has a politicalconnotation. In order to reappropriate reality, we must taketwo important steps: recover our sensoriality as the foundingact of a new way of thinking and acting or reacting; and gainrespect for other cultures by learning to understand otherpeople’s categories (categories necessary for recognizing thegood). These steps can help us to communicate, to worktogether to redeem food-producing communities, and, ulti-mately, to perceive reality through our senses as a great net-work of flavors and knowledge.



This global reality must be matched by an act performed atthe most local level: eating in our own homes. This act of sur-vival is aware of the good to the extent that it is aware of theplanetary diversity that surrounds it. Although this act cannothave the benefit of omniscience, it starts from the sharing of cri-teria for making a “good” choice within a complex reality, whichis accepted as such. The good is an aim, for quality is the aim of anew and universally shared sensibility or sensoriality.

1.6 Is it good?The first of the three indispensable and interdependent prereq-uisites (good, clean, and fair) for a quality product is thereforethat it be “good”—good to the palate and good according to themind. The good has superior sensory characteristics, the bestones that can be obtained while respecting a criterion of natural-ness. It will be the new gastronome’s task to respect these char-acteristics, to learn to recognize them, to produce them orencourage others to produce them according to the culture inwhich he lives, and to prefer them always.

This is a political task. The purpose of politics is to improvethe quality of life, and the good has the same function. If anyoneshould object that politics is a serious matter, that it has nothingto do with these questions, I would reply that the good, too, is avery serious matter. This is no heresy; there is nothing to beashamed of.

Good is respect for others and for ourselves, striving toensure that it becomes a right for everyone is part of our civi-lizing mission. Reaffirming the good must lead to respect forthe earth and for its different cultures: we are talking abouthappiness. If anyone is alarmed to see how democratic thegood can be, that is not the gastronome’s problem. If this reaffir-mation of pleasure offends the bien pensants (who, however,take their own enjoyment selfishly and irresponsibly and neverrenounce pleasure), that is not our problem. Nor will it everbe, at least until the good, flavor, knowledge, and pleasure aredenied us, withheld in the name of that fear and offense or,



more dangerously, in pursuit of profit. Should that happen,then the gastronome will indeed be forced to intervene. Weare talking about happiness: happiness for the earth and for itsinhabitants.

{ DIARY 9 } THE INDIAN PRAWNS

On December 27, 2004, the world awoke to pictures of adisaster of apocalyptic proportions. A powerful earthquakea few kilometers off the coast of Sumatra had caused ahuge tidal wave, which had struck thousands of kilometersof coast in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, andeven East Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people werekilled, towns razed to the ground, and a wasteland of ruinswas left where previously there had been human settle-ments. Human lives were destroyed, societies torn apart,cultures threatened; the losses were incalculable. The restof the world at once showed great solidarity; aid for thevictims was mobilized on an unprecedented scale. Oncethe emergency was over, people began discussing thefuture of the areas affected—tourist resorts, coasts inhab-ited by simple fishermen and farmers, places where thelocal population, already beset by numerous problems,had to start all over again.

The debate about how to use the aid from the richWest was very intense in the months following the disaster,and for our part, to clarify our ideas on what needed to bedone, Slow Food decided to hold a public debate, compar-ing two different points of view, two different visions of theworld. The East and the West between Nature and Foodwas the title of the event, and it took place in Turin onFebruary 14, 2004. We invited two friends to lead the dis-cussion: Enzo Bianchi, prior of the monastery of Bose innorthern Piedmont, and Vandana Shiva, the Indian scien-tist and activist.



The debate that evening sought answers, rangingover a variety of questions from our relationship with thesupernatural forces that influence earthly actions to theculture clash in the tourist resorts that had been ravagedby the tsunami. The debate was of a very high level, and Iwas particularly struck by the opening words of Shiva,which were brutally direct and provocative:

The effects of the wave that struck the coasts weremainly the fault of the human race. The coasts, bereft oftheir natural defenses because of the construction oftourist villages and the destruction of the mangroveforests for agroindustrial purposes, have been left com-pletely exposed. As a result hundreds of thousands oflives have been put at risk. The principle of humanresponsibility toward nature has been disregarded andwe have been hit with unprecedented force.

A responsible attitude to the environment character-ized by a sacred respect for nature, for other humanbeings, and for future generations: this noble philosophy ispart of everyday life in those countries, and is observed inagriculture and in human relationships of all kinds, but ithas been suffocated by the irruption of a different cultureand different methods of production.

Shiva told us a story of incredible “mal-production,”which is in danger of being repeated with even more disas-trous consequences now that reconstruction is underway.In many coastal areas affected by the tsunami in India andBangladesh, intensive prawn farms have been createdwhich have devastated the existing ecosystems, with seri-ous consequences for the lives of the local inhabitants.

In the early 1990s, promising rapid development,huge profits, and the creation of new jobs, the experts ofthe World Bank managed to convince the Indian govern-ment that intensive prawn farming would put an end tocenturies of poverty and of small-scale subsistence econ-



omy along six thousand kilometers of coastline. Prawnfarming seemed to be the panacea which, under the far-sighted direction of the World Bank, would guaranteeIndia lasting prosperity.

But these farms occupy vast areas. Within a fewyears, thousands of hectares of fertile soil, where the farm-ers had previously cultivated simple but diverse crops—especially rice—for their own needs, were transformedinto huge open-air basins. Filling them requires a largeamount of fresh water, so large that it has drained thewater-bearing strata below the nearby villages. They alsoneed a certain amount of seawater, which, in time, pene-trates the soil, rendering it unfit for use in the short term.

The prawns are given massive doses of antibiotics toprotect them from the diseases to which they are most sus-ceptible, because they are living in extreme conditions: thepopulation density in those basins is far too high. Theantibiotics also serve as growth accelerators and, mainlyfor this reason, are overused. Moreover, the prawns aresprayed every day with the right quantity of chemicals tobalance the artificial conditions of the ecosystem in whichthey live. This treatment of course requires a constant sup-ply of water, which, for the sake of economy and simplicity,is then discharged into the sea.

In addition to the damage that has been done to agri-culture, therefore, the fishing industry has also been crip-pled. The polluted water, which is rich in nitrates andnitrites from the prawns’ excrement, accelerates thedecline of the mangrove forests, which were already seri-ously depleted by the installation of the prawn farms. Thepresence of mangroves is extremely important in theseareas because they protect the coast against the force of thesea (significantly, the tsunami did less damage along thoseparts of the coast that were still protected by the man-groves) and provide a refuge for the fish, which, once theyare deprived of their natural habitat, either die or moveelsewhere. The fishermen, who used to work inshore, are



forced to buy deep-sea fishing boats—if they can affordthem—and go further out to sea in order to catch anything.

The result? Widespread ecological damage, villagesreduced to desperate straits, and widespread unemploy-ment. A basin for a prawn farm employs two people, in anarea which previously guaranteed work, year round, to120 rice-growers. What is more, the prawns are intendedfor the markets of the United States, Europe, and Japan,which in recent years have been inundated with tons ofthese crustaceans. It should be mentioned that prawnswere produced on the Indian coast even before the intro-duction of intensive farming, but in those days they wererotated with the growing of rice, a rotation that refertil-ized the soil ecologically (with unpolluted excrement) andalso made use of the soil, which would otherwise havebeen left fallow for a year. Consumption was mainly local,but that is no longer the case: the local people, now job-less, cannot afford the expensive “industrial” prawns, afood which they once produced in harmony with naturefor their own subsistence.

In the last few years, two disciples of MahatmaGandhi, Krishnammal and Jagannathan, have been givingvoice to the protests of the coastal population, which werebeing ruined by the aggressive invasion of these farmseven before the tsunami. The World Bank, for its part, hasalready planned to rebuild the flooded farms—indeed, toenlarge them. I have no doubts about which side to take,and Shiva’s story—published in Italy by Laura Coppo inher book Terra, gamberi, contadini ed eroi (Earth, Prawns,Farmers, and Heroes)—is another example of how a fail-ure to respect local cultures and thousand of years of sus-tainable production can only worsen the lives of those weclaim to be helping.

Moreover, failing to respect nature can be very risky:when nature rebels with such violence, whether or not it isa coincidence, technocratic man is always the first to aid inthe destruction.



slow food nation—excerpt

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