The Futures Foundation

A major exhibition planned for San Francisco at the end of August is being called "the largest celebration of American food in history" -- and it's not fast food but Slow Food.  Its message is that Americans need to fix the food system or risk destroying their health and the planet. 

According to the San Francisco Chronicle 50,000 people are expected to participate, including some of the world’s leading food authorities, health care experts, farmers and policymakers.

"Slow Food Nation is the first such event to be held in the United States, although it’s patterned after similar events in Europe." the newspaper reported on June 30.  The exhibition will be held over the American Labor Day weekend (August 30 to September 1).

"Slow Food, a philosophy that food should be not only savored, but also produced with a social and environmental conscience, started as an Italian protest movement in 1986.

"Furious that McDonald’s had come to Rome, political activist Carlo Petrini organized a demonstration against the fast-food chain.

The recent FAO Summit in Rome called for $10 billion more to pay for higher food prices. Yet, without financial reforms, this money will merely fatten the players in the global casino.

The games of traders, speculators, hedge funds, private equity and even pension funds and charitable foundation and university portfolio managers, driving up prices of oil and food, invoke increasing outrage and demands for reform.

Ever since the 1980s when Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan spurred de-regulation of global finance and privatization, market fundamentalism became the main game.

But at last the world is seeing the difference between money and real wealth, between “demand” in markets and the real needs of people without money.  We cringe at the tragic pictures of poor people eyeing abundant, tempting supplies of food in the local markets around the world but who are forced to go away hungry or make their children patties made of mud, spices and whatever scraps of vegetation they can find.