Legarda: Serve ‘slow food’ for ‘media noche’

For media noche, serve “slow food” instead of fast and processed variants to support local cuisine and traditional cooking.

Sen. Loren Legarda made this appeal to Filipino households amid the holiday festivities as part of her advocacy for sustainable food and conservation of the country’s biodiversity.

Legarda explained that the slow food movement was a global advocacy that advanced the concept of good, clean and fair food by preserving traditional and regional cuisines that were becoming extinct, and promoting the propagation of plants, seeds and livestock of local ecosystems.

“At the heart of the slow food movement in the Philippines is the preferential choice for food that is innately ‘good,’” said Legarda, a member of one of the five local chapters of the slow food movement in the country.

‘Good’ food

Choosing “good” food starts from planting to harvesting, packaging, marketing and delivery, taking into consideration the local skills and talents it harnesses and the respect to the environment and the labor put into making and preparing it.

“It is an advocacy that envisions a world that embraces the process of food production that is good for the humanity and the planet,” she explained.

The slow food advocacy has since spread worldwide after it began as a grassroots movement in Italy in 1986. It reached Philippine shores in 2012 when Slow Food Manila was organized.

Local chapters of the organization are in Manila, Negros, Baguio, Pangasinan and Cavite, where events and activities are held in various communities to bring the movement’s philosophy to life.

Message

Legarda said Slow Food Manila had been holding taste workshops to show people how to use endangered heirloom species such as gluten-free adlai, a grain from Malaybalay, Bukidnon; rare and luxury Criollo cacao from Davao; coffee from Batangas and Benguet; and souring agents like  batwan, tabon-tabon and suha.

“It is important for us to communicate more to the public the message that to support slow food is to support what is right and what is good for our people and our country,” said Legarda.

She stressed that the movement also aimed to protect Philippine biodiversity by encouraging the swapping of seeds from the different regions in the country, and preserving traditional and indigenous Filipino knowledge.