Eat and run

I've seen stories about the "slow food" movement in left-leaning mags like Utne, and one of my colleagues (an anthropologist) worked on this on her sabbatical.

Is there anything to it? Are some Americans starting to rebel against the "fast food nation"?

Well, I recently came across this disturbing statistic -- and was shocked:

John Nihoff, a professor of gastronomy at the Culinary Institute of America, says about 19 percent of our meals are consumed in cars...

Major caveat: "his definition of 'meals' includes in-between snacks like doughnuts or a bag of carrots."

Other numbers aren't quite as startling:

Kelton Research, polling 1,000 people for Taco Bell this summer, found the portion of people who say they eat in the car at least once a day (9 percent) was eclipsed by the number of people who say they never eat in the car (31 percent).

The market researcher NPD Group says the average person ate 32 restaurant meals – including snacks like cones - in the car last year. That's up from 19 in 1984.

It seems like we're a long distance from "slow food."

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Filed as: slow food