Slow foods & local foods are fabulous, and we should be grateful to those who have made them part of the landscape. Thanks to advocates in recent years, many of us can now purchase a tomato from the store and know where it came from or have a conversation with a grower while getting apples at the local farmer’s market. These encounters allow us to better understand our food, and they make eating more pleasurable by connecting us to the past, and to each other.
But they do not solve the fundamental problem we face with American food and the way we’ve been taught to use it.
Our generation has inherited a food system—and by that I mean everything from how our food is grown, to how it is processed, to its flavors, to its branding, marketing, and store shelf placement—that depends on convincing people to eat and drink way more food than they need, way too much of the time.
Within this system, it would be wonderful if everyone could go local—slow—organic. But better health doesn’t depend on it. Better health does depend on being able to eat moderate amounts, for rational reasons, and stopping when one is full.
It’s not a zero sum game, of course. We can have local/slow food and ethical/sustainable food production and marketing practices. Yet I notice that I hear far more about the importance of yummy foods and regional farmers than I do about the importance of fair, just, and rational food landscapes. Why not advocate for the heirloom tomato and the concept of a once-in-a-while soda and the removal of nutritionally bereft (2 for 1!!) foods from the end of the aisle at the grocery store? Consider what would happen if some of the efforts we put into creating and sustaining farmer’s markets were diverted to build better barriers between food promoters and American stomachs.
I think part of the problem is that the food revolution has become, in a way, too tasty. We want to advocate for structural change, but we want to do it through a good meal that we enjoy. Fighting for accurate claims in food marketing (diet! natural! healthy!) or dissecting grocery store product placement—these are a long way from meals many of us who care deeply about food would even want to eat. Thus, while we feel occasional outrage (bewilderment?) when we see a mega display pushing 3 12 packs of soda (+chips!) for $10, the attention can easily drift away from problems that, if solved, would benefit someone else (who doesn’t “eat right” anyway…) to those that benefit ourselves.
We should sit down together at the table of slow/local and celebrate our good fortune. And, when the meal is done, take that tasty energy we’ve ingested and use it to regulate industry claims and prevent the over-making and over-marketing of all kinds of food in the US.
That way, no matter how fast their food moves, all eaters could have a better shot at health.
... and everyday life 
While I agree with the editorial part of the piece essentially in full, I am curious as to maybe a suggestion or inkling as to how this would work. Because increased regulation of food production, marketing, etc. doesn’t seem in the least but realistic “in the street” so to speak. In fact Tea Partiers etc., who some commentators have suggested are some of the biggest fast food consumers, regularly bring up potential food regulations as a serious threat to their “freedoms”. In other words, many Americans see regulation as a much greater threat than the cheap, poorly sourced, heavily preserved, and sharply curtailed range of foods, flavors, etc. that the fast food world offers. Sure, it’s great to say that this should change. But there is absolutely nothing here pointing us in the right direction.
Point taken. I wanted to point out that concerns about slow/organic/local often don’t address the big problem facing us: overproduction and overmarketing of foods (regardless of where they come from). But what to do about it? Off the top of my head (and worth arguing about) 1) create better tools (social media? gaming systems?) that let consumers educate each other about what foods they like, don’t like, and how they enjoy consuming them (so messages don’t come from industry marketing alone), 2) regulate where appropriate–i don’t buy that Americans “don’t want regulation”–i think if the FDA required “diet” foods to deliver on the claim of weight loss that would work–it did in Europe, and 3) wait for competition from food companies that use new messages about quality, not quantity, and “less is more.” Then there’s removing subsidies so things wouldn’t be so cheap and easy to overconsume…