Email Campaign Archive

This weeks website resource is about slow food and slowing down.
 Slow food as opposed to "fast food"

Here's a bit about what I mean:

Are you always in a hurry?

Does life feel like a never-ending race against the clock?

These days, many of us live in fast forward – and pay a heavy
price for it. Our work, health and relationships suffer.
Over-stimulated, over-scheduled and overwrought, we struggle to
relax, to enjoy things properly, to spend time with family and
friends. The Slow movement offers a lifeline. It is not a
Luddite plot to abolish all things modern. You don't have to
shun technology, live in the wilderness or do everything at a
snail's pace. Being "Slow" means living better in the hectic
modern world by striking a balance between fast and slow. In
Praise of Slow is the first handbook for the emerging Slow
movement. Through a blend of anecdote, reportage, first-hand
experience, history and intellectual inquiry, it explains how
the world got so fast and why slowing down can pay dividends in
every walk of life. To illustrate the benefits of deceleration,
the book travels from a Tantric s-ex workshop in London to a
meditation room for executives in Tokyo, from a Chi Kung squash
class in Edinburgh to a SuperSlow exercise studio in New York
City, from a TV-free household in Toronto to Italy, the home of
Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Sex movements. Wherever you go,
whatever you do, the message is the same: slower is often better.

I got off the phone with my sister just now after we spend a
good half hour talking about food, teaching about food and what
the students she's teaching are learning about.  We discussed
how parents think that learning about Chemistry is more
important that learning about food because Chemistry will help
them get a better paying job and or have more job opportunities.
 The class she teaches is a balance between the actual cooking
of the food as well as lectures and information about where our
food comes from, how it's grown, the return to farming practices
and why organic farming is making a big comeback.  She was
telling me about an article she read about  "slow food" and the
"slow food movement" and how a fellow had his "ah ha" moment
when he was about to buy a book on "one minute bedtime stories".
He thought that would be a great way to save time, by cutting
down on the time to read to his kids.  Then the idea floored him.

In the United States, the book is called In Praise of Slowness.

In the rest of the English-speaking world, it is called In
Praise of Slow.

www.inpraiseofslow.com

From his FAQ's:

Why did you decide to write a book about slowing down?

Because my life had become an endless race against the clock. I
was always in a hurry, scrambling to save a minute here, a few
seconds there. My wake-up call came when I found myself toying
with the idea of buying a collection of "One-Minute Bedtime
Stories." Suddenly it hit me: my rushaholism has got so out of
hand that I'm even willing to speed up those precious moments
with my son at the end of the day. There has to be a better way,
I thought, because living in fast forward is not really living
at all. That's why I began investigating the possibility of
slowing down.

What did you discover?

That our obsession with speed is taking a terrible toll on our
work, diet and health, our relationships and sex lives. The good
news, however, is that more and more people around the world are
resisting the pressure to do everything in a hurry. And, by
slowing down, they are enjoying richer, fuller lives.

I as well find that I have to tell myself to slow down
sometimes.  I try and get too much done too fast, or am trying
to wolf down my food.  I know it's not good.  What I learned
during my journey has been to sit and eat, and just sit and eat.
 
There was a time when I would sit for a moment and actually give
thanks before each meal for all the people involved in bringing
me the food I was about to eat.  If you think about it, it's
quite a long list of people. 

There are the farmers who plant the seed and tend to the farm
and then harvest it.

There are the people who transport the food to the markets for
sale.

Then there are the people who run the markets, arrange for all
the food to be delivered to them, run the business where we buy
our foods. 

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of people in that chain, but you get
the picture.  The good food that I choose to eat was put on my
table because of many people.

I had a rule years ago that we would not watch television during
meal times.  We would talk about the day we had and each of us
would have a turn discussing our wins.  It was a good time.
Then I was in another relationship for a short time and there
was no way in hell that we would eat together at a table, nor
would we eat with the television off.  The young girl in the
family ate in her room watching television, my girlfriend ate
watching TV and I ate alone at the dining room table.  It was
actually a challenge to eat together and was considered odd.
I'll be the first to agree with her that we were in two
completely different places in our lives at the time and I see
that better now that it's been awhile. 

Guess which experience was more pleasant?

Next time you have a meal, take a moment to turn off the TV, eat
at the dining room table with no distractions and discuss with
your family or partner all the good things that happened in the
day for you.  You may decided to add a few more of these slow
meal times per week.

have a look and maybe there's something in this that calls to
you.

www.inpraiseofslow.com

here's a BBC perspective
www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/slowfood.shtml

Until next time
Eat Well, Be Well

Rob
www.formerfatguy.com