The world has lost a man who dared to utter the most dangerous word in the modern culinary lexicon: slow. Carlo Petrini, the Italian gastronome who founded the Slow Food movement and spent decades railing against the tyranny of the microwaveable lasagne, has shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 76. He leaves behind a legacy that includes 100,000 members in 160 countries, a global network of food activists, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing he made a generation of foodies feel terribly guilty about their lunch hour.
Petrini was the sort of man who looked at a McDonald's and saw not a burger, but a sermon on everything wrong with humanity. He believed that food should be savoured, that local produce mattered, and that the act of eating was not merely a biological necessity but a revolutionary act. One can only imagine his horror at the rise of the Soylent drinkers, the Huel disciples, and the entire sorry spectacle of people who treat nutrition like fuel injection.
His movement began in 1986 as a protest against the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. The protest involved pasta, music, and a lot of hand-waving. It was a uniquely Italian form of rebellion that involved more olive oil than Molotov cocktails. From this seed grew an organisation that would eventually fight for biodiversity, defend small farmers, and champion the idea that a meal should last longer than the time it takes to order a takeaway through an app.
Petrini was no mere gastronomic nanny. He understood that the real enemy was not fast food per se, but the entire culture of speed. His manifesto, if he had one, would have been scrawled on a napkin in a trattoria somewhere in Piedmont and would have read: Eat slowly. Drink well. Resist the siren call of the drive-through. His critics called him a food snob, a gastronomic aristocrat who wanted to deny the proletariat their McFlurry. But Petrini was a man of the left, a former communist who saw the slow food movement as a form of class struggle. The poor, he argued, were the first to suffer from the industrialisation of food, and so they should be the first to demand something better.
In his later years, Petrini became something of a grand old man of the culinary world. He was awarded countless honours, including being named a UN Ambassador for the Environment. He wrote books, gave speeches, and generally looked like a man who had just enjoyed an exceptionally good lunch. His face, with its bushy eyebrows and gentle smile, became synonymous with the idea that food could save the world. Or at least make it worth getting out of bed.
The loss of Petrini is a blow to all those who believe that the dinner table is a battleground. He taught us that every meal is a political act, that the choice between the organic carrot and the shrink-wrapped one is a matter of global significance. He was a prophet of pleasure in an age of efficiency, a man who insisted that we taste our food rather than merely scanning it for barcodes.
So raise a glass of Barolo. Chew slowly. And remember Carlo Petrini, the man who told us to take our time and gave us the moral high ground to justify it.
Rest in peace, Carlo. The world will be a little bit faster without you.
