Now that we’ve found out what Slow Food is, it seems important to bring some arguments about the benefits of local food. I think it would be a good idea to embrace one or more of the following reasons if we feel like it.

So:

1.   If you consume local products you have a big positive impact, since you generate economic income for the community you live in. By buying locally you support the existence and the creation of jobs, thus maintaining a better economic outlook in the rural areas, where there is a high risk of depopulation, due to the danger of people relocating to cities or emigrating to other countries. With My Transylvania Association, we support communities by organizing year round gastronomic events in the villages from Sibiu County, even in small communities of 10 inhabitants.

2.       On the other hand, eating locally contributes directly to the prosperity of the social environment in which you live by generating additional added value through consuming products with local successive stages of processing.

3.       Eating from local producers ensures that you consume a clean, fresh and healthy food, knowing your supplier. Tracing it can be very easy by a simple visit at the place of production. You can always check the quality of the products, either by analyses or asking for the opinion of other consumers who are not anonymous like in the supermarket. An exercise for us, especially in 2019 when we celebrate the local gastronomy, is to visit the producers we know from local markets such as the Transylvania Hall, Green Friday or Cibin Market. Maybe we can even organize this visit together, what do you say?

4.       By supporting small local family businesses such as groceries, caterers, restaurants, we involuntarily support the emergence of a community, a social structure. They appear lightly around the local markets, small shops where people establish long-term relationships. Ideally, it can lead to the existence of a community where people still find a lost social model, such as in the past of their neighborhood.  Do we eat locally in 2019?

I still know some other benefits.