An article more famously known as the Good, Clean, and Fair: The Rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement by Stephen Schneider hit me with a doozy of a quote within the first page. Schneider described the Slow Food movement as something that aimed to "[retain] a local focus while aspiring to a more global reach" (385), and for my group, that seemed to be right in our wheelhouse.
Going into the project (which really kicks off with the interview this Thursday!), we had a number of ideas about possible topics we could tackle: healthier eating habits on the go; questioning what types of meat restaurants are actually feeding you when you dine out, partly inspired by Stephanie Bowser and her fish-'n'-veggies lifestyle; the process and logic behind creating/results of eating cloned beef; comparing and contrasting what a ShopRite nutritionist tells consumers as opposed to a Whole Foods salesperson would tell their customer. If all else failed, we could've fell back and tackled something like Kevin's Law, a subject so deep I'm not sure there's actually a shallow end to wade into. Instead, the everyone put their heads together and with a stroke of good fortune through Facebook, we decided to interview someone in Medford that Michael Youngkin knows, someone that is setting up a farmers market. Through the interview, we hope to ascertain as to the reasoning behind her starting the market now, hopefully discovering not only her motivation, but also her future goals. The project is certainly one that lends itself to further gatherings from local growers.
To me, the quote from Schneider's piece symbolizes what our group thinks should be a more mainstream ideal. Namely, local doesn't have to be considered small. If consumers stop buying at supermarkets that ship in their goods from all over the country and the world and start frequenting these upstart farmers markets, something on the local level could actually span the world. There's something about that idea that amazes me -- local farmers will have that much of an impact. Sure, Farmer Joe in South Jersey won't be impacting families in Southern California, but he's got his farmer peers out West that will (hopefully) be doing the same thing he is.
"Located in Fiat’s former factory in Turin, the inaugural 1996 Salone marketed small-scale food producers and their products to a total crowd of 32,000" (Petrini, Slow Food Revolution 91). Wait, what's that? Small-scale food products marketing their products to a local, albeit incredibly sizable crowd? That sounds an awful lot like a really big farmers market! That seems like a really big goal to set, but if eating locally is something that catches on, I can see markets blowing up like that. More people need to be made away of the problem first, as I still feel that a large portion of the country has its blinders on when it comes to healthy eating habits, but the signs are hard to ignore. When things like Pink Slime start popping up on the Daily Show, it's a pretty big news story. Meat containing the pink slime has been banned from Taco Bell and McDonald's, and if those two think it's unsafe only after it comes out to the public what's in their mystery meat, what the does that say about the fast food industry? What's that say about the food we're stuffing our faces with?
Last but not least, even though these two quotes don't really apply to the research project, I felt they were powerful in their own right: "Put simply, good food is tasty and diverse and is produced in such a way as to maximize its flavor and connections to a geographic and cultural region. Clean food is sustainable, and helps to preserve rather than destroy the environment. Fair food is produced in socially sustainable ways, with an emphasis on social justice and fair wages" (390), and,
"The Noah Principle can be further taken as a strategic move away from protest-oriented action toward more productive efforts at organization and engagement. As Petrini argues, '[o]ur choice is to focus our energies on saving things that are headed for extinction, in- stead of hounding new ones we dislike'" (390).
The last quote is really telling. Instead of throwing stones and preparing for the big I-told-you-so once the industrial food market is exposed for the back-lit villains they are, the folks behind the Slow Food movement are doing something about it. As opposed to predicting the weather, Schneider writes, they're trying to build the boat that could potentially save us all. If/when it comes out that GMOs can cause blindness and testicular cancer for anyone that eats them, those suggesting to "redefine their gastronomy" can say to everyone that hasn't already gone blind or lost a ball, "Hey, this is healthier and tastes better and it isn't going to cause you to expire at a faster rate than intended. Hop aboard the Ark, everybody!"
Oh, and since I don't want the other member of my group to feel left out, I'm gonna name drop him here and link you to Darren Gaunt's article on the reading. It has a pretty boss picture of a bowl of soup that talks about the same topic. Bam! #intertextuality #audienceawareness #iknowhashtagsdon'tworkhere
Going into the project (which really kicks off with the interview this Thursday!), we had a number of ideas about possible topics we could tackle: healthier eating habits on the go; questioning what types of meat restaurants are actually feeding you when you dine out, partly inspired by Stephanie Bowser and her fish-'n'-veggies lifestyle; the process and logic behind creating/results of eating cloned beef; comparing and contrasting what a ShopRite nutritionist tells consumers as opposed to a Whole Foods salesperson would tell their customer. If all else failed, we could've fell back and tackled something like Kevin's Law, a subject so deep I'm not sure there's actually a shallow end to wade into. Instead, the everyone put their heads together and with a stroke of good fortune through Facebook, we decided to interview someone in Medford that Michael Youngkin knows, someone that is setting up a farmers market. Through the interview, we hope to ascertain as to the reasoning behind her starting the market now, hopefully discovering not only her motivation, but also her future goals. The project is certainly one that lends itself to further gatherings from local growers.
To me, the quote from Schneider's piece symbolizes what our group thinks should be a more mainstream ideal. Namely, local doesn't have to be considered small. If consumers stop buying at supermarkets that ship in their goods from all over the country and the world and start frequenting these upstart farmers markets, something on the local level could actually span the world. There's something about that idea that amazes me -- local farmers will have that much of an impact. Sure, Farmer Joe in South Jersey won't be impacting families in Southern California, but he's got his farmer peers out West that will (hopefully) be doing the same thing he is.
"Located in Fiat’s former factory in Turin, the inaugural 1996 Salone marketed small-scale food producers and their products to a total crowd of 32,000" (Petrini, Slow Food Revolution 91). Wait, what's that? Small-scale food products marketing their products to a local, albeit incredibly sizable crowd? That sounds an awful lot like a really big farmers market! That seems like a really big goal to set, but if eating locally is something that catches on, I can see markets blowing up like that. More people need to be made away of the problem first, as I still feel that a large portion of the country has its blinders on when it comes to healthy eating habits, but the signs are hard to ignore. When things like Pink Slime start popping up on the Daily Show, it's a pretty big news story. Meat containing the pink slime has been banned from Taco Bell and McDonald's, and if those two think it's unsafe only after it comes out to the public what's in their mystery meat, what the does that say about the fast food industry? What's that say about the food we're stuffing our faces with?
Last but not least, even though these two quotes don't really apply to the research project, I felt they were powerful in their own right: "Put simply, good food is tasty and diverse and is produced in such a way as to maximize its flavor and connections to a geographic and cultural region. Clean food is sustainable, and helps to preserve rather than destroy the environment. Fair food is produced in socially sustainable ways, with an emphasis on social justice and fair wages" (390), and,
"The Noah Principle can be further taken as a strategic move away from protest-oriented action toward more productive efforts at organization and engagement. As Petrini argues, '[o]ur choice is to focus our energies on saving things that are headed for extinction, in- stead of hounding new ones we dislike'" (390).
The last quote is really telling. Instead of throwing stones and preparing for the big I-told-you-so once the industrial food market is exposed for the back-lit villains they are, the folks behind the Slow Food movement are doing something about it. As opposed to predicting the weather, Schneider writes, they're trying to build the boat that could potentially save us all. If/when it comes out that GMOs can cause blindness and testicular cancer for anyone that eats them, those suggesting to "redefine their gastronomy" can say to everyone that hasn't already gone blind or lost a ball, "Hey, this is healthier and tastes better and it isn't going to cause you to expire at a faster rate than intended. Hop aboard the Ark, everybody!"
Oh, and since I don't want the other member of my group to feel left out, I'm gonna name drop him here and link you to Darren Gaunt's article on the reading. It has a pretty boss picture of a bowl of soup that talks about the same topic. Bam! #intertextuality #audienceawareness #iknowhashtagsdon'tworkhere
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