SlowPlanet Forums: Forum: Food

SlowPlanet Forums: Forum: Food - Recent Topics http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/ Just another bbPress community en Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:34:23 +0000 Pauline on "Being a Vegetarian Helps you Slow Down" http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/topic/being-a-vegetarian-helps-you-slow-down#post-27 Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:09:41 +0000 Pauline 27@http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/ Being a vegetarian changes your life in more ways than changing what you eat. You are forced to slow down because you have to think more about what you are eating. No more grabbing a McDonald's burger for a quick lunch. Maybe if vegetarianism becomes more accepted, and McDonald's offers veggie burgers, you will find "fast" vegetarians but for now being a vegetarian means making most of your meals, cooking from scratch, eating grains and vegetables instead of animals. I have been a vegetarian for over 25 years (started in my mid-20s). In the early 80s my husband and I were looking for a healthier way to eat and worked our way from Pritikin to McDougall to vegetarian and ended up at Macrobiotics. When vegetables are the main part of your diet, you want the best vegetables you can find so we eat organic and try to find locally grown/produced foods. Cooking dinner is one of the calmest parts of the day for me and I really enjoy preparing our meals. I left the traditional business world (and gave away my suits) a few years after becoming a vegetarian. For me it felt like becoming a vegetarian was the first step in making a lot of changes in my life, to live more intentionally and to slow it down. axel on "Who’s slow and when are you slow enough?" http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/topic/who%e2%80%99s-slow-and-when-are-you-slow-enough#post-98 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:50:06 +0000 axel 98@http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/ Slowfood is an important organisation for us . To our opinion we should support all possible actions which leads to more awareness of what we are daily eating, doing, living . Our small contribute to improve this awareness we do through our restaurant. We are owners of a 35 seats restaurant in the middle of Italy. Because since I do not know anymore if we are “Slow” and misunderstood the Slowfood Organization goals, I would like to explain our philosophy. - Working / cooking with local products and respecting the so called “0-meter” policy. From the producer directly to the consumer! The (organic) olive oil from the village, fresh fruit and vegetables we take from local farmers, preferably organic. The meat is organic, traceable and always from our province. The selection of our wines in the Cantina is done by ourselves. Also here we prefer organic wines, from small local producers. Even the water we serve is from the nearby source. We have homemade bread and partly from a local bakery. - Freshness of the served food. The menu is very limited and almost daily changing. Our kitchen is small and we only have very limited space to store products to cool or freeze. This means we only work with very fresh products. - Respect seasons. Only vegetables and fruits of the season are served. I don’t know what your opinion is, but we think that we are very “Slow”. And I think, and this has been tol dus many times from our guests, that our restaurant would fit perfectly into the Slowfood guide. But we are not! Since 5 years we are running this restaurant. I know that we’ve been nominated, even from Slowfood people themselves, but never been selected for the Slowfood guide. In the time that we are living here, we’ve visited many “Slowfood” restaurants suggested by the guide and I have to say that we were many time very disappointed about their “Slow” level. (industry-frozen products / precooked stuff / out of season products (asparagus in November e.g.)/ kind of fastfood Italian restaurant where waiters are smashing the dish in fron tof you on the table.) Some people told me that I have to pay for the service to get into the guide, because more and more the Slowfood movement becomes a political issue. Beside that I do not have any idea who I should pay and what.. I don’t want to pay for this service. I like to get this recognition for our concept and way of business (life) and am expecting that from an independent source. So what is the policy of Slowfood in this.? How independent is their listing of restaurants really? Like I said before, we are appreciating and supporting the goals of Slowfood, but if we are not slow, Who is it then? I’m looking forward to your comment, also to understand the procedure. If you like to get an impression of our restaurant, please visit <a href="http://www.osteriadelcardinale.it." rel="nofollow">www.osteriadelcardinale.it.</a> raybakes on "Slowing down eating and our tastebuds" http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/topic/slowing-down-eating-and-our-tastebuds#post-69 Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:38:36 +0000 raybakes 69@http://www.slowplanet.com/forums/ Hi, I'm a Nutritional Therapist who saw Carl give a talk on Slowness this week. I felt inspired after the talk to put down a few things in this section and in the medicine section. My mother always said chew your food and eat slowly – well there is good reason! If we eat slowly and chew our food, the sugars from carbohydrates hit our bloodstream more slowly and evenly. Eating too quickly causes a spike in blood sugar which can result in more of our food going to fat rather than energy. Eating slowly allows enzymes in the mouth to start breaking down food and puts less of a load on the rest of digestion. Eating too quickly keeps us in a stressful state. Digestion only works properly when we are relaxed. The parasympathetic nervous system that drives digestion is suppressed during stress. Appreciating the colour, aroma, taste and texture of food is an important part of stimulating digestion. Only by taking time can we appeciate these qualities and improve our digestion.....and eating becomes more enjoyable too! MSG as a food additive speeds up our taste buds and makes us think something tastes good. Chinese food and crisps are a common source. Aspartic acid in aspartame and nutra sweet is an excitotoxin and can speed up brain cells so quickly that they die from a lack of energy.