Slow economy, slow food?

In “Out of the Office: Fast Bikes, Slow Food, and the Workplace Wars” (New Yorker June 22, 2009), Kalefah Sanneh discusses a number of books that signal an “artisanal revival,” in the way people eat and work, linking the popularization of the trend to the economic downturn. Sanneh says, “this artisanal revival has been particularly pronounced among foodies, thanks in part to the writer Michael Pollan, who helped popularize an American variant of the Italian culinary-agrarian movement known as Slow Food. In ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and ‘In Defense of Food,” Pollan surveyed the excesses of the ‘industrial food chain’ and paid thoughtful tribute to small farms and local produce.” Sanneh points out that, “the genius of this loosely organized movement is that it’s not a labor movement; it’s a consumer movement.”