Slow Food and Culinary Innovation

The Slow Food movement was born as a direct reaction against the spread of fast food into places its founders considered culturally inappropriate. In 1986, plans to open a McDonald’s restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Rome provoked public protest from Italian food writers and activists who saw the arrival of standardized, industrial fast food as a threat to regional culinary traditions, local agriculture, and the unhurried social ritual of the shared meal. That protest crystallized into an organized movement dedicated to defending traditional, regionally rooted food production against the homogenizing pressures of industrial food and the accelerating pace of modern life.