Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences

David Szanto

Location: UCLA California NanoSystems Institute Auditorium

Co-founded in 2003 by the international non-profit Slow Food and the Italian regions of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, the school’s innovative approach is to create a new understanding of gastronomy, linking the act of eating with the act of producing, along with all the phases in between. Four programs at two Italian campuses follow a multidisciplinary learning model, merging science with humanities, sensory training with communications, classroom study with field seminars. The Slow Food movement was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy to combat fast food. It claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an ecoregion. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to over 83,000 members in 122 countries.