When McDonald’s planned to open a McDonald’s near the Piazza di Spagna in Rome in 1986, a man named Carlo Petrini organized a protest. As their weapons the protesters used bowls of penne. Petrini wrote a manifesto against the fast-food culture and he founded the Slow Food Movement. The movement promotes traditional and regional foods as well as agricultural biodiversity, home culinary gardens, small farms, and sit-down dinners.

 

The Slow Food Movement has been key to reviving the “victory gardens” people planted in their yards, on their rooftops, and in their neighborhoods during WWII. But, this time people are planting home and neighborhood culinary gardens to provide personal independence from corporate agriculture, from the industrial food chain, and from mass marketed foods, and to save money, water, energy, and other resources.

 

The spread of home culinary gardening is reviving a connection to Nature people lost by becoming too attached to commercialism, restaurants, and store-bought foods.

 

Many affiliate groups have been started around the world.