© Slow Food

The phrase "slow food" and its commercial spin-offs -- slow cooking, slow living, slow sex, slow shopping -- have made a mark in mainstream ink and ridden its airwaves. Popular culture is quick to feed on well-packaged ideas, reduce them and spit them out. Challenging the dominance of fast food means first confronting the highly processed language of food, so that we can imagine a different way of eating and, ultimately, of living. Slow Food members in Canada are developing homegrown expressions of a movement that originated in Italy. Canada is fertile ground for great food, too. We just haven't eased off the pedal long enough to notice.

Slow Food is an international movement and a philosophy founded by Italian food journalist Carlo Petrini in 1986. It aims to defend biodiversity in the food supply by challenging government policies that favour industrialization at the expense of small-scale sustainable food production. The movement also strives to spread the education of taste, and to link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives.

As a philosophy, Slow Food espouses the pleasures of eating, but not for eating's sake and not just any food. It's delicious food that isn't made or grown at the expense of the planet's or people's welfare.

Canada is fertile ground for great food -- we just haven't eased off the pedal long enough to notice.

© Slow Food

Slow Food Canada has nearly 800 members and 17 convivia (convivial groups) from Vancouver Island to Cape Breton. The largest convivium is in Quebec (based in Montreal). The convivia organize local food festivals, taste seminars, food education in schools, school gardens, farm tours, cooking classes and lecture series. As an organization, Slow Food is well suited to gathering farmers, chefs, consumers and politicians around the table in the spirit of conviviality rather than simply joining the fray.Anita Stewart is the convivium leader of Slow Food Elora, a founding member of Cuisine Canada (www.cuisinecanada.ca) and the author of The Flavours of Canada: A Celebration of the Finest Regional Foods. In her latest book, she writes, "We must begin to eat locally, regionally, nationally and only then internationally. We must learn to explore our local production, fitting it in to our own ethnicity, encouraging our gardeners to grow what they can, sharing our knowledge and our tastes."

© Slow Food

Indeed, exploring local production through our particular ethnicities has the potential to change the face of agriculture in Canada. Wally Seccombe, at the Everdale Organic Farm (www.everdale.org) in Hillsburgh, ON, stressed the importance of new immigrants because they often bring agricultural and culinary knowledge that, if not practiced, is lost in a generation. As Canadians, our food heritage is not only extremely varied regionally, it's also ethnically diverse. But it takes more than people and knowledge. At its core, Slow Food is about the land. Preserving food heritage and developing local food culture means growing plants, raising animals and cultivating the trades that transform raw products into specialty foods.

© Katharina Schiffl for OpenPhoto

This is where the concept of terroir becomes indispensable. Terroir is the imprint of geography, soil, climate and people on a food, be it a wine grape or a potato. An appellation system is a method of naming foods according to where they have been grown or how they have been made, or both -- organic, hand-harvested and unpasteurized, for example. Quebec's comprehensive agricultural appellations mean that a specialty food from a specific terroir can't be co-opted by an imported product. And, because its value is directly related to the land, the value of the land is ensured by the success of its products.

Food in Canada has primarily been a commodity and an industry. This isn't going to change overnight, but it is changing. The small-scale farming community is growing, as is the number of artisanal producers of cheeses, meats, honey and breads. Success stories are increasing in every province. The combination of readily available arable land, fresh water and a rich, ethnically diverse population gives Canadians the opportunity to become world leaders in sustainable, regional cuisine.