Slow Food. An Interview with Julie Schaffer

"The founding father of the Slow Food Movement, Carlo Petrini, recognized in 1986 that the industrialization of food was standardizing taste and leading to the annihilation of thousands of food varieties and flavors. Concerned that the world was quickly reaching a point of no return, he wanted to reach out to consumers and demonstrate to them that they have choices over fast food and supermarket homogenization. He rallied his friends and began to speak out at every available opportunity and soon the movement was born and Slow Food was created. Today the organization is active in 50 countries and has a worldwide membership of over 80,000."

(Slow Food USA)

We were very interested in finding out more about Slow Food and had the opportunity to talk with Slow Food Atlanta's Julie Schaffer.

Clare Aslaksen - A Big Slice: How did you first learn about Slow Food?

Julie Schaffer of Slow Food Atlanta: I found out about it while is was in Italy in the summer of 1999. Just through a casual conversation. I thought Slow Food was a cute sort of ironic name. I thought it was just the opposite of fast food; long, slow, decadent, delicious meals. I thought it was just, more or less, a food dining club. But I came home and just on a whim typed in "Slow Food" in a search engine, just to see what would come up. I was amazed that it was a huge international organization. The more I read about it the more interested I became.

What really attracted me was that I was trying to live my life that way. Most of the time I feel like I'm swimming upstream and after I realized that Slow Food was a big international organization, I wanted to become a member. I called the newly opened Slow Food USA office and asked Patrick Martins, who was the founder of the USA group about joining a chapter here in Atlanta. He said that there was one in Chattanooga. and one in Greenville and even in New Orleans, but there was not one in Atlanta. However, as it turned out, there were some dues paying, card carrying members in the area. He asked if I would consider starting an active chapter in the city. Now I had to think about it. I was teaching full time, a single parent. But being the enthusiast that I am, I said yes.

I filled out the application to become a leader and was accepted. They then sent me information on how to get started. I initially contacted the other local members and told them that I was trying to start a chapter and asked them if they would like to come to a meeting and about 18 people showed up. They were from all walks of life. business people, farmers, and people who just care about good quality food.