Is Tea Slow Food?

Attending a Slow Money event recently got me thinking about the Slow Food Movement and organization. I wondered about how tea fit into these two movements.

The Slow Food website answers the question of what Slow Food is as follows:

“Slow Food is food that’s good for us, good for our environment and good for the people who grow, pick and prepare it. In other words, food that is good, clean and fair. In many ways, Slow Food is the opposite of fast food. Slow Food is fresh and healthy, free of pesticides and chemicals, and produced and accessed in a way that’s beneficial to all – from the farmer to the eater.”

So is Tea a Slow Food? Would love to hear your thoughts about this.

You can read my blog post on the subject at http://www.leavesofcha.com/blogs/news/77905413-is-tea-slow-food-ayurveda-workshop-event

6 Replies
Cwyn said

Well my puerh tea is certainly slow. I do everything I can to tell it to age faster, but it remains bitter anyway.

The “slow food” movement is an update on previous food movements. But teas are often exploiters of near slave labor in South Asia. Is it worse than poultry processing here? Depends on what you consider factors aside from labor.

Poultry is another great example of a food that can be produced in a fast, commoditized way that would not fit into the Slow Food philosophy.

There are a lot of aspects that can be considered within the Slow Food movement. One that is not included in the definition above but I have seen in other articles is that slow preparation and consumption allows one to relax and make time for conversation and spending time with each other. Taking the time to take puerh through the multiple infusions certainly would fall in line with that part of the movement. That’s something I’m thinking about blogging about in a follow-up post.

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Brian said

i am not too aware of the term “slow food”.
but the way you explain it i would think any food production that is industrialized isnt considered slow food.
and if i am drinking tea that used massive amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons to ship it across the largest ocean in the world, then that wouldnt be considerd slow food.
local, organic, self produced is slow food to me. not the fact of consuming it slow.

You make good points here. I consider myself a locavore and try to eat locally produced food. But like all things in life, I believe in moderation and not taking a concept to its extreme. So with tea, which is not grown in my Southern California area, I cannot be a locavore. But with many vegetable and fruits, I can be and choose to be. I don’t generally eat produce (other than tea) from China. When apples aren’t available from the apple growing regions in the U.S.A., I don’t shift and eat them from Chile, I choose other fruits. When I drank wine, I mainly drank Californian but would occasionally compare them to the other great wine producing regions of the world. But again, this is my own personal manifestation of slow food consumption.

I believe that when the Fast Food movement started in Italy, it was also a reaction to “fast” food in the sense of eating on the run, not taking time to enjoy the food and maybe company. That is not mentioned in the definition above. But I incorporate that into my slow food philosophy as well. Not that I don’t have times when schedules cause me to eat fast(’ish) food while on the run!

Exactly, I think that it was the opening of a McDonalds in Rome was what set it in motion!

Yup. The golden arches defacing the Spanish Steps.

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