Putting the Breaks on Fast Food: An Interview with Slow Food NYC

The United States has the largest fast food industry in the world, and American fast food restaurants are located in over 100 countries. Drive-through restaurants were first popularized in the 1950s in the United States and since then home cooking, culturally significant cuisine, and deliberative food experiences have increasingly been replaced by the consumption of fast food. Slow Food NYC is the New York City chapter of Slow Food, a non-profit, member-supported organization founded in 1989 to counteract fast food culture. Slow Food stands against the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. We talked to Martina Kenworthy, who has been on the board of Slow Food NYC since 2011.

Michaela Elias (ME): Do you want to start off by telling me about yourself and Slow Food New York?

Martina Kenworthy (MK): I have been in the food business for a very long time. I started a company that imports artisanal products from Italy and there was always a strong connection with the producers. We would find products that are at risk of disappearing because they’re really not that well known. I have been on the Slow Food NYC board for 7 years and I’m co-chairing the board this year. So I have seen changes in the food system and also the ways in which an organization like Slow Foods can try to have an impact. We are a 13 people, all volunteer self-funded board trying to run a lot of initiatives. And it’s sort of multi-angled approach, we try to avoid telling people what to do or how to think and instead we observe what’s going on and try to be a part of the conversation on different levels.

ME: What kinds of projects or messages do you focus on?

MK: One of the things we have focused on is education because it’s about conditioning certain behaviors, so in this respect we have always been very active with helping schools. We work with schools during the school year and with a farm in East New York in Brooklyn over the summer to run a tuition free program that runs for about 2 months. So children come in and they are part of everything that happens on the field and the farm. They harvest, they cook — and cooking seems to be their favorite activity. We have been doing that for eight years. So we have the farm in the summer and then we give many grants to schools and we offer logistical and networking support. We have consultants go into schools and help them with whatever they want to do, so it could be we consult a teacher on how to start a school garden or how to bring more of these topics into your curriculum and cafeteria and so on.

Then we also work with producers so we look at the source of the food. We have created a seal of approval program which recognizes companies who are producing good, healthy, clean food so consumers can make informed decisions when they are deciding where their money should go. Another thing we do that I think has become extremely popular is that we have an annual food policy event called the Food Almanac and we’ve been really amazed by the attendance and the enthusiasm with which it has been received. It usually involves a panel of people coming from different sectors so it could be policy, it could be a farmer, it could be producers, it could be someone who is running an urban farm, and we want to inform people what these conversations look like. It’s a very soft touch approach, it’s not telling anyone what to do but giving people a better idea of something small or big that they can do.

And besides all these other projects we have purely convivial get togethers to gather the people who want to work with us or who know what we’re doing and want to follow us because we have a strong base of social media followers but because there’s no formal membership it’s hard to identify who they are. So we want to continue to understand who are the people who are interested in our organization and want to do things with us and how do we reach out to them.

ME: What have been your greatest accomplishments?

MK: I think one of our strengths is being extremely passionate about food in all its expressions. I think what Slow Food has done internationally and locally is not forget that it can be relatively easy to discuss these topics if you offer good food.

I’m also always impressed how smoothly our work proceeds and seeing new people joining the board every year and its almost like we’ve always been together. So we are able to be very efficient.

ME: Are there any challenges you face as an organization?

MK: I think maybe one of the challenges of an organization like ours is the volunteer structure and having more ideas and wanting to do more than we can possibly manage. Another issue is going into communities without being just an external presence but rather working to collaborate, and in the case of East New York we are really trying to work more and more with community organizations and centers and food kitchens and really ask them what is it we could do to help and what their needs are.

ME: How do you see the New York food system changing?

MK: We’re very optimistic because when we started there weren’t many organizations in New York who were addressing these issues and now there are more and more. There are a lot of very young people joining the discourse bringing a lot of fresh perspectives on how things can be fixed. I have definitely seen an evolution of food culture and a willingness to try new things and increased curiosity about where our food is coming from. I think it’s important not to lose sight of the very strong experiential aspect of eating and I think the exchanges can be really uncomplicated if you base it on tasting and food culture so that it’s easy to think about where the food is coming from.

ME: What are the most pressing changes you think are needed to make local food systems more resilient?

MK: Well I think that what we’re all trying to do is to support the farm economy and so I would love to see some progress there with the Farm Bill. I think also changing the mentality of the consumer and being very transparent about what’s happening and what the consumer can do to improve the system. I want to look at the very first step and where this transaction happens and how can we enhance it and safeguard it.

For Slow Food NYC’s upcoming events including the annual duck off, an all-duck competitive chef cook-off and tasting event, check out their calendar. Slow Food NYC is currently looking for funds to be able to run the farm and a new lot they acquired which will be dedicated to growing food for the community. Donate to Slow Food NYC here.