John Jemison Cooperative Extension Professor
I’ve been interested in working in the area where our agricultural programming and our
food and nutrition program overlap. I’ve been interested in that because I see there’s
a real connection between how we grow our food, what people eat and long-term public
health, and I think there is a real need to improve this. Every year the number of people
who are overweight or obese increases, and parallel to that, the number of people being
diagnosed with diabetes is increasing. There are a lot of reasons we have this problem
today. Many people think it’s the lack of exercise, many people think it’s because
we eat too much fast food, but the reality is that when we eat out more often, we lose
control over portion size, we lose control over what goes into the food and we also lose
our food culture. We lose the capacity to know what to do with food when we have it.
So what do we do with raw broccoli, what do we do with beets? We end up losing some of
that. So the whole concept of slow food really came
about to say, “We need to slow down around food, we need to appreciate food and we need
to elevate its importance in our lives.” The slow food program is really focusing on
three things, the first of which is changing our role from being food consumers to being
what we call food co-producers. When we go out and buy food from local farmers, we’re
completing the loop. We’re helping them be successful and we come home with quality
food – food we need to do something with. The second thing that slow food is trying
to have us do is to eat food that is good, clean and just. Good food means food that’s
healthy for us, food that’s clean (meaning it doesn’t require a lot of pesticides
and no herbicides) and food that’s just. We want our farmers and farm families to have
a nice lifestyle, so we need to be able to pay a little more for our food so we can ensure
that happens. The last thing slow food is really trying
to do is build community around food and get people to want to sit around the table as
families, as friends, and really enjoy the good aspects of food. In doing so, we will
keep our food culture – we won’t forget how to do what we need to do with food.
This garden is an example of what people can do on a local level that meets the goals of
slow food. This is a slightly different community garden in that instead of growing food for
the person, we’re growing food for the community. Volunteers come in and learn how to grow quality
food. We use organic, sustainable methods in this garden and we give a bag of food away
to 50 low-income seniors for about a three-month period.
In doing so, they get quality food. Being on fixed incomes, it’s often very difficult
for them to be able to buy this kind of food. They take good advantage of the food, they
appreciate the food and maybe more than anything, they really enjoy the contact with the volunteers.
So in doing that, we are really trying to meet the goals of slow food, elevate the importance
of food and build community around food. I think telling people they have to eat differently
or telling people they have to exercise is not really going to change their opinion about
this problem. What I think can change it is elevating people’s appreciation of food.
I don’t think there’s a better way to do that than to know what it takes to grow
quality food. I think we can work in our communities and we can start community gardens, and this
will be the start of a process to change the overall trends in public health.