In the 1980s Italy gave the world the slow food movement. Born in 1986 from its predecessor organization, Agricola, it started out as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome’s iconic tourist destination, the Spanish Steps. Carlo Petrini, its founder, had no idea that this limited local protest would explode after only a few years into a global movement, encompassing not only a new awareness of the damaging impacts of fast food, but to a worldview that acknowledged the corrosive nature of modern life.

Fast food became a symbol of the chaotic life that we live in our post-globalized world,  from the moment we gulp down that first cup of coffee, to the lunch we wolf down at our desks between meetings, to the soul destroying commute on the way home, to the frozen meal heated and popped out of our microwaves.