Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global ... (ISBN 0759109141)

Speed is not the Only Issue:
I am the editor of this book, so this is not an unbiased review by any means. This is indeed a collection of academic papers, presented at a conference, which were edited to make them work together as a book. I worked very hard to make sure the papers are free of jargon and are written in a style which should be accessible to any educated reader. It is no news that there are some serious problems with our global food system. Not only are there a lot of hungry people on the planet (still over a billion), but now the number of severely overweight humans is about equal to the number who go to bed hungry at least a few times a week. Farmers everywhere are in trouble, and the quality of the food we are all eating is questionable at best. So what is the answer? How do we fix it? The Slow Food movement has a very attractive answer, and they have been effective in getting a lot of people to think about the alternatives to mass-produced factory foods, about returning to food of high quality made by people who care. Most of the authors in this book are sympathetic to the goals of slow food. But that does not mean we should suspend our critical thinking either, and many of us wonder if slow food is really another 'Arts and Crafts' movement, if it really addresses the needs of poor people and problems of justice and cultural diversity. So the papers in this book ask tough questions, and in the end we try to redefine the issue. Quality food is more than an issue of slow vs fast.