How fast is your food?
The slow food movement was begun as a reaction to the fast food industry. Despite the moniker, slow food doesn’t necessarily mean food that takes a million years to prepare and eat. It’s about knowing where your food came from and how it was prepared. It’s about participating in what you eat, knowing what you eat, and enjoying the food.
Food is the lowest common denominator among all cultures. No matter who or where you are, we all have to eat. For thousands of years, food has been used as a way to bring people together, to celebrate community and friendship, shared heritage or cultural differences. But with the advent of international fast food chains, we have moved away from local cuisine and traditional cooking practices. When we eat fast food, we aren’t reminded about where the ingredients came from or how the dish came together. We are simply consumers, and the slow food movement aims to change all that.
That doesn’t, however, mean the food actually has to be slow.
Take street food vendors, for example. Street food can definitely be a way to eat slow food fast. One of the major problems, however, is that it is difficult to stop and enjoy street food, or to come together with others to do so. In New York City, however, Ali Pulver intends to change all that.
Pulver, a grad student at Pratt, has created the Pop-Up Lunch program, where a few simple designs can turn an ordinary sidewalk into a comfortable eating space.
“Ultimately, I hope that my efforts might inspire even a handful of my fellow urbanites to reconsider the potential for lunch to be a joyful daily event,” wrote Pulver on her Pop-Up Lunch blog.
Her designs allow individuals to turn common street objects such as fire hydrants, chain link fences and metal posts into a place to stop and enjoy lunch – just as the slow food movement aims to do. She has come up with the lunch ledge, the fire hydrantable, and the lunch sack which holds your lunch and then turns into a seat you can attach to a chain link fence. Basically, it is about getting people to stop moving and enjoy a meal. And what better slow food than street food?
Street food, although it may not exactly follow all the protocol to qualify as slow food, is still a good example. It is a way to experience traditional foods from different cultures, prepared in traditional ways by immigrants. It is a celebration of a cultural heritage and an expression of that heritage through regional cuisine. Obviously, this can’t be said for every hot dog stand out there, but buying from vendors that use fresh and traditional ingredients can be a quick way to enjoy slow food. And if Pulver’s designs catch on, you can once again enjoy foods with a sense of community and enjoyment.
