By Chelsea Reil
While Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s dominate the Curry Student Center food court, some students and faculty want to promote a group that is locally grown.
Slow Food USA, a division of Slow Food International, is an organization that emphasizes the value of eating locally-grown, seasonal food that isn’t processed in a factory. It may form a Northeastern chapter soon.
Slow Food began in Italy in 1986 to oppose the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome near the Spanish Steps and expanded to the United States in 2000. Today, Slow Food stresses the idea that all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the earth.
Sophomore environmental studies and international affairs major Julianne Stelmaszyk said she hopes a Slow Food chapter will encourage students to examine their own eating habits.
“Maybe people will understand that you can’t eat strawberries in November, or you can’t eat bananas because they don’t grow in North America,” she said. “Food is something that really touches you. [We want] to make people more knowledgeable about food.”
Professor Aysen Tanyeri-Abur, who is helping to set up a chapter at Northeastern, said the lack of this generation’s knowledge of food will come back to haunt it.
“We don’t know what food looks like,” she said. “Most people don’t know what a wheat plant looks like. We can’t taste anymore.”
Tanyeri-Abur said the Slow Food doctrine is a return to earlier times.
“Slow Food is very much a cave man diet, basic,” she said, “The closer you are to the provider, the slower it is.”
Those who choose to live a Slow Food way of life argue that eating locally-grown foods helps avoid shipping processed food across the country, which can pollute the environment. Freshman pharmacy major Alex Cabble said she would like to see a Slow Food chapter at Northeastern.
“I know that my family is always buying locally grown food because it’s better for the environment,” she said. “At the university we consume so much food, that to encourage better eating would be better for the students.”
Slow Food has a number of objectives within its mission statement, including forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties; preserving and promoting local and traditional food products; lobbying against the use of pesticides and government funding of genetic engineering; encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces; and educating consumers about the risks of fast food, among others.
Slow Food has already set up chapters at campuses around the Boston area, including Boston University and Harvard University. Campus chapters can host events to visit local farms, have outings to “slow” restaurants and have events to promote the Slow Food vision and educate their peers. Tanyeri-Abur said she hopes to have an event in the Xhibition Kitchen, comparing conventional foods with the “slow” equivalent to let students decide which they would rather eat for themselves. She also talked about starting a vegetable garden on campus and bringing more sustainable foods to the dining halls.
Stelmaszyk said she wants to have students voice their opinions about the direction of Northeastern Slow Food.
“I want students on campus to say what they want: if they want a garden or if they want cooking classes to teach about local foods,” she said. “We can teach people around the community about seasonal food and how to store food over the winter. We’re trying to get people involved with their food.”
Freshman engineering major Kevin Ahearn said that while he was not sure he would join such a group, it would be beneficial to bring it to campus.
“It’s good to have the option if people want it there,” he said. “I’d probably check it out but I don’t know if it’d be for me or not.”
A meeting will be held Wednesday, Nov. 19 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. in 104 Kariotis Hall for students interested in helping start a Slow Food campus chapter.
