Customer Reviews

Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair

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Carlo Petrini gave a lecture at NCSU in Raleigh earlier this year. His talk was in Italian, but his ideas were universal: if we want happiness and peace, we're going to have to change the way we eat.

The book is fantastic. It is beautifully written, powerful, and balances scientific data and understanding with cultural histories and sensible aestheics. His proposal of a new branch of science, gastronomy, is as revolutionary as Freud's proposal to study the human psyche or David Kelley's efforts to study design as a science.

This book is The Inconvenient Truth for those who eat. But it is also a far more optimistic book, for the solution to the problem of industrial agriculture is to seek out good food, to meet and learn about the farms and farmers who grow it, and the reward is pleasure.

The Introduction by Alice Waters is, like the food at Chez Panisse, a sensual as well as a sensible delight.

This is a great book to buy, read, and then share with others, all around the world.

More than a reaction to Fast Food's arrival in Italy, Slow Food
has evolved into a global movement encompassing many different actions to improve what we all taste and eat.
It's not about eating well in the privileged, Michelin-starred table sense. It's about recognizing everyone's barriers to eating well and judging the quality of our food on three levels, asking whether it is good, clean and fair. (The book's original title is just that: Buono, pulito e Giusto).
The movement's founder wrote this book to set out a new definition of gastronomy, enumerating some of the issues facing our food supply and helping to turn a thinking eater to positive action.
Beautifully translated, Slow Food Nation is a cogent & readable introduction to what Slow Food is about. Highly recommended!

Carlo Petrini has been attempting to preserve a more traditional view of food for a long time, this book lays out his current thinking in a clear and concise layering of understanding food in culture (gastronomy), understanding quality (good, clean, fair food), and the tools to put these ideas to work in the world going forward.
As we reconstitute a food culture based on transparency and quality in the USA and hopefully across the globe, this book provides key ideas related to respect for diversity of food products, respect for food in culture, and respect for the work associated with food that can serve to guide us. This book made me think and laugh, and I recommend it highly.

A great book for anyone wanting to know about the 20 year old revolution of slow food that began in Italy...buying locally grown and produced foods to provide the healthiest foods for our bodies and to take care of our planet as well. If you're into agricultural and ecological sustainability or your not, but you either want to be a part of it or are curious about it...this book is the one to start with. An easy read and highly recommended.

This is simply a beautiful book. It is motivational. It is deep. It is intelligent. It is profound. I am glad I have read it. It is a simple matter really. If you care about people, animals, plants, food, the earth; what is called the world then you will enjoy this book and will find enrichment and satisfaction. If on the other hand you choose to live in ignorance and oblivion and prefer to act as an individual pursuing only ones selfish interests and to consume indiscriminately without concern or knowledge then you need this book but will most likely find a way to refute it. The translation is excellent. This is not a difficult read for a well-formed mind and I suspect you will enjoy Petrini's style. I particulary enjoyed his diary insights about the experiences of his life that gives us an acoount of others trying to do good. Read this book you will be rewarded.

The in-depth book provides a thorough examination of the quintessential modern diet that merely depletes and deprives the modern person. Petrini goes fully into slow food technicalities to exemplify his rather complex theology.

Certainly worth the meticulous read, so long as you're up for such immense information.

I wonder how many guests have dined with Mr. Petrini and thought, "Does this guy ever shut up?" The author wastes too much ink waxing philosophical or arguing for a Utopian "return to the old ways" of agriculture. Never mind we couldn't feed a few billion people.

In "Slow Food Nation", Mr. Petrini lays out his argument for a sustainable world food system that is "good, clean, and fair." Unfortunately, Mr. Petrini loves the sound of his own voice and how clever he is, and he ends up preaching to the choir. Since Mr. Petrini is trying to save the world by changing the way we all perceive our food, perhaps he should have written his book so that a noble peasant-of-the-soil could appreciate his world-view.

In Petrini's narrative there were several somewhat amusing anecdotes and I gleamed some insight about how insidious Agribusiness truly is, but these gems were far and few between. Most of the book was insufferable verbal gymnastics of what he deems a gastronome should be. This guy has way too much time on his hands or has some kind of OCD.

I am actually 100% in agreement of what Mr. Petrini stands for. He just shouldn't be the messenger. If you're still interested in this important subject from a practical point of view--and not what reads like an elitist restaurant critic--I would recommend Michael Pollan's informative and enjoyable tome "The Omnivore's Dilemma".

This is a beautifully written book that will make you stop and think. In Slow Food Nation, Petrini has given us an objective way to judge the quality of our food.

A very important book for all who are interested in real and healthy food for the planet.

I really bought this book as a gift item for my daughter. According to the source, it is an excellent book and quite well written.