Worldwide eco-gastronomic movement Slow Food is quietly seducing Mumbai with its ideas of leisurely dining and local shopping. Kasmin Fernandes finds out why this anti fast food movement can do you nothing but good

Adrienne T hands you fresh basil leaves, straight from the plant, at the herb garden she is growing on the terrace of co-working space The Bombay Hub in Bandra. They are more aromatic than any basil you'll buy from a packet. Bite into the leaves, and you've also discovered they're much more delicious. The 23 year-old wants the rest of Mumbai to discover the joys of eating food you've grown yourself.

Her new social initiative Fresh and Local will raise awareness about community gardening and edible landscaping. "I would love to see people grow food on terraces and balconies. It takes far less space than you'd think," says the Slow Food advocate.

Adrienne is part of a languid subculture of people who are buying local, relishing every bite, and avoiding fast food like the plague.

Seen from afar, the Slow Food movement is an unlikely mash-up of people with widely differing
viewpoints, from dreadlocked environmentalists to agrarian socialist farmers and celebrity chefs. There is more to it than meets the eye, though.

Back to tradition
It has taken years for the movement to officially take shape in India, and Mumbai, although millions of people in our country have been quietly and unknowingly living its essence.

"Slow Food took root in Italy, and then spread the world over, to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. So, India has a long tradition of Slow Food, which we are slowly forgetting, especially in cities," says Lata Sharma, director, Navdanya and Slow Food convivium leader for Mumbai.

The Delhi-based NGO is promoting the movement closer home in alliance with the international non-profit organisation Slow Food (.com), founded by Carlo Petrini.

How it started
Slow Food began in 1986 when Petrini, a journalist, staged a successful protest against plans to build a McDonald's on the Spanish Steps of Rome. Petrini and his colleagues continued to meet to define the threats of fast food, which ultimately led them to a much broader discussion on the dangers of globalisation.

Petrini preached that one of the most obvious is the threat to culture, and at the heart of most cultures is food. It's currently trying to shed its image as a pleasure-based club for people who can afford to linger for hours at the dining table. Slow Food organises fairs, markets and events like Salone del Gusto, Slow Fish, Aux Origine du Go ufffdt and A Taste of Slow, locally and internationally, to showcase products of excellent gastronomic quality and to offer discerning consumers the opportunity to meet producers.

Terra Madre
In recognition that Slow Food had become top-heavy with consumers, the movement in 2004 launched the Terra Madre network (literally, Mother Earth) to bring small farmers and food producers onboard, and help them collaborate on improving their own artisan food networks. "Every two years, the movement comes together in Turin, Italy, for the Terra Madre gathering," says eco-nutritionist Kavita Mukhi, who's just back from this year's gathering.

Mukhi, and 20 other Indians, attended a series of workshops and discussions, looking at the challenges of food production and distribution; and the Salone del Gusto, a major exhibition of foods made according to the Slow Food principles.

There, 6,400 farmers, fishermen, cooks, food activists, teachers and students from 161 countries were engaged in three days of intense dialogue.

"Although buying local and cooking traditional has been a custom out here, it's losing ground to technology and fads, mostly among the urban young. Reviving that interest is the real challenge here," says Mukhi. She's doing her bit through her natural food label, Conscious Food, and the weekly Farmers' Market in Mumbai, which supports small farmers practising organic farming.

Slow on the uptake
While celebrity chefs around the world hold special Slow Food events, restaurants out here have been slow (pun unintended) to catch up with the movement. "Udipi restaurants and Indian restaurants like Soam and Indian Harvest are doing a great job of keeping up the desi culinary tradition. Italian gelato chain Amore too advocates Slow Food in a big way. They rarely import ingredients, use local ingredients creatively, localise flavours (Gulkand Cashew, for instance) and introduced an organic gelato flavour last December," says gastronomic writer and consultant Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal.

The Slow Food fan has launched Masala Trails culinary tours that combine history, culture and the foods of India, to take you through local households and traditional styles of cooking to the more elaborate royal experiences and recipes.

As Petrini said in an online interview, "Old ideas that still work can be maintained, as preferable to revolution, where the good is sometimes tossed out with the bad."

Number crunching

Slow food worldwide
A network of 100,000 members in 153 countries -- grouped in 1,300 local chapters called convivial -- develops activities, projects and events at a local, regional and global level. These currently include:
>>More than 5,000 Slow Food initiatives each year.
>>10,000 small producers involved in 314 Presidia projects.
>>903 products at risk of extinction promoted through the Ark of Taste catalogue.
>>1,300 food education activities and 350 school gardens in 100 countries.
>>Terra Madre network activities which involve 2,000 food communities, 1,000 cooks, 500 academics and 1,000 young activists.

The handbook: Your guide to joining the movement
1. Join a Slow Food group: The Mumbai convivium (local Slow Food group) run by Navdanya currently has 20 enlisted members. Of course, you don't have to join to be a part of the Slow Food movement -- it is just a chance to share ideas and to participate in events together.
Contact: Lata Sharma, convivium leader for Mumbai.
Email: latasharma22@yahoo.com
Call: 9920418027
Visit: www.navdanya.org

2. Shop locally: Shopping locally is a key element to being a Slow Foodie. Shop at your local farmer's market, your local fruit and vegetable store. Consider asking for veggies from your neighbours if they are growing some. Not only do you save the wear and tear on the environment from all the energy consumed in long-range transportation, you also know where your food came from. The greatest benefit of shopping locally? The food is as fresh as possible.
The Farmers' Market will be open today from 10 am to 4 pm at National College Square, Linking Road, Bandra (W).
Call 9821142700 for details

3. Avoid genetically modified (GM) foods: The Slow Food movement is fundamentally against the use of genetically modified food products because in making a large swathe of common food sources generic, we risk losing the all-important diversity and quality of food available around the world and replacing it with mono-crops that become more susceptible to disease, providing less healthy variety and possibly increasing the chances of human-induced disease through over-concentration on a few food types.

4. Start cooking: Stop buying processed, packaged, pre-made foods and cold cuts, and start pulling out your recipe books. Look for family heirloom recipes passed down through generations. Be careful about your recipe choices, however. The fancy cookbooks might call for ingredients that need to be imported from many miles away; avoid these and favour recipes that let your local produce take centrestage, including veggies and fruits from your own garden or local bazaar.

Coming soon

The Terra Madre Day
In 2009, the very first Terra Madre Day saw more than 1,000 events take place across 120 countries in one of the largest collective occasions celebrating food diversity and the right to good, clean and fair food. This December 10, Maharashtra Nature Park and a couple of other locations will play host to the first Terra Madre Day celebrations in Mumbai. Participate in a dinner prepared from indigenous ingredients, following traditional recipes, to spread the importance of preserving our food knowledge and food lore.
Email: Rushina Munshaw
Ghildiyal on rmgcsg@gmail.com

For Terra Madre Day, the Mumbai Organic Farmers & Consumers Association and Slow Food Mumbai are inviting the public to one of their supplying farms for a day of food and celebration, and to get to understand local food production using organic agriculture.
Contact Ubai Husein on ubai.husein@gmail.com

5 reasons to eat slower
Slow Foodie and popular lifestyle blogger (zenhabits.net) Leo Babauta gives 5 powerful reasons to take smaller bites and chew slower:

1. You'll lose weight
u00a0A growing number of studies confirm that just by eating slower, you'll consume fewer calories -- in fact, enough to shed 9 kilos a year without doing anything different or eating anything different. The reason is that it takes about 20 minutes for our brains to register that we are full. If we eat fast, we can continue eating past the point where we are full. If we eat slowly, we have time to realise we are full, and stop on time.

2. You'll Enjoy food
It's hard to enjoy your food if it goes by too quickly. Think about it: you want to eat sinful foods, because they taste good. If you eat them slowly, you can get the same amount of great taste, but with less going into your stomach. Make your meals a gastronomic pleasure, not a thing you do rushed, between stressful events.

3. You'll digest better
If you eat slower, you'll chew your food better, which leads to better digestion. Digestion actually starts in the mouth, so the more work you do up there, the less you'll have to do in your stomach. This can help lead to fewer digestive problems.

4. You'll be Less stressed
Eating slowly, and paying attention to our eating, can be a great exercise in mindfulness. Be in the moment, rather than rushing through a meal thinking about what you need to do next. When you eat, you should only eat.

5. You'll lead a happier lifestyle
Rebel against fast food and fast life. Our hectic, fast-paced, stressful, chaotic lives -- the Fast Life -- leads to eating Fast Food, and eating it quickly. This is a lifestyle that is dehumanising us, making us unhealthy, stressed out, and unhappy. Rebel against this lifestyle and philosophy with the small act of eating slower. Eat at a good restaurant, or better yet, cook your own food and enjoy it fully.

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