From Fake Abundance to Frugal Abundance
Conviviality, so praised by Brillat-Savarin, could rebuild the social bond torn apart by globalization. The term conviviality should be interpreted to highlight the spirit of giving in social relationships and the sharing of one's food with others. Conviviality, an attenuated form of Aristotle's philia (friendship), allows the compatibility between individualism and the solidarity necessary for the existence of a community. Conviviality is the art of living in joy. A joy also celebrated by Beethoven in the famous hymn of the IX symphony, where the emotion felt for the simple fact of feeling alive and in tune with one's natural and human environment is enhanced.
The conviviality we mean is celebrated during a meal interpreted according to the frugal abundance that pursues the degrowth of the excesses of overconsumption and waste. It denounces junk food and the inequalities linked to intensive agriculture and large-scale distribution, proposing an enhancement of peasant agriculture that respects the dynamics of the soil and life, supporting the protection of the biodiversity of traditional cuisines threatened by planetary homologation. It is about developing the values of a society built on frugal abundance. A society that promotes a healthy and quality diet linked to organic farming and the fight against waste. It clearly testifies to the value of what we affirm even a global phenomenon such as obesity, a disease caused by junk food that increasingly afflicts the world.
Be careful, what is called into question with frugal abundance is not all phenomena of growth, but the "society of fake abundance". To conceive of a virtuous society, we must question the domination of consumerism over the whole of life. The starting point must be a change in values. To earn money as much as possible, by all means, by exalting competitiveness, possibly crushing others, and even by destroying nature without hesitation and without limits.
To be aware that wealth is not just money; True wealth can also be having friends, doing interesting things, getting intellectually rich, realizing one's potential, etc. If we question wealth linked only to money, we must also rehabilitate poverty and frugality, which is different from material and moral misery. A form of dignified frugality was a positive value for all societies, and also for ours until about the eighteenth century. Let's not forget that frugality is at the origin of the invention of an important part of every kitchen. In short, we must behave as good gardeners and not as predators.
Frugal Abundance Theory
The relationship between food and frugal abundance aims to promote a tasty, healthy and balanced diet. Someone will say, "But what does abundance have to do with frugality?" I answer that I mean the abundance of biodiversity and food variety with the frugality of consumption, which can be achieved by following the theory of the 5 "Rs": Re-evaluate, Rethink, Reduce, Relocate, Recycle.
As a promoter of frugal abundance I propose to...
- Re-evaluate real food production (junk food aversion);
- Rethink a lifestyle based on conscious, i.e. frugal, quantitative food intake (obesity spectrum);
- Reduce waste (pay attention to labels);
- Relocalize crops (promote biodiversity);
- Recycle as much as possible (circular economy value).
I specify that with the term frugality I am not criticizing the natural phenomena of growth, but our "growth society" where frugality has a negative meaning, linked to deprivation and poverty. Growth as a biological phenomenon is, of course, a wonderful thing. Plants and animals are born and develop. The biological cycle of birth, development, maturation, decline and death of the living and its reproduction are also the condition for the survival of the human species, in harmony with the surrounding plant and animal environment.
In the book The Physiology of Taste, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (my inspirer) defines gastronomy as "the reasoned knowledge of everything that refers to man as a being who feeds" and therefore: natural history, physics, economics, politics, etc. In this sense, the proposal of frugal abundance is a project that has social, agricultural, nutritional, culinary and sensory implications, in short, from the field to the table. But why do we want to promote this vision? Because Western society (and not only) is no longer in symbiosis with nature but exploits it mercilessly, in order to grow infinitely. It is a pity that such a society is not sustainable for the simple fact that it clashes with the limits of nature. It is in fact based on a triple limitlessness: that of the production and therefore of the withdrawal of resources, renewable and non-renewable, that of the production of needs - and therefore of superfluous products - and finally that of the production of waste and consequently of the emission of waste and pollution (of the air, of the earth, of water).
The consequences of this organization are disastrous for agriculture, society, food and health. Just to give an example, if we focus on the agricultural world, it means the impoverishment of the vernacular, that is, that very diversified form of cultivation created to deal with any situation (aridity, frost, excessive heat, floods), applied thanks to a knowledge (also empirical) that concerned the territory and the means to intervene in it.
Industrial agriculture, driven solely by the concern for rent, favors monoculture and genetic manipulation in the service of the interests of agri-food multinationals. As a result, about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops, according to the FAO, has been lost over the past century. Monoculture also has disastrous effects on the landscape, leading to an increasingly monotonous uniformity. Industrial agriculture does not give life to a landscape, it flattens it. Modern economic logic has transformed abundance into varietal poverty and assigned a negative value to frugality. It is for these reasons that I want to promote frugal abundance for our food happiness.
Conviviality, so praised by Brillat-Savarin, could rebuild the social bond torn apart by globalization. The term conviviality should be interpreted to highlight the spirit of giving in social relationships and the sharing of one's food with others. Conviviality, an attenuated form of Aristotle's philia (friendship), allows the compatibility between individualism and the solidarity necessary for the existence of a community. Conviviality is the art of living in joy. A joy also celebrated by Beethoven in the famous hymn of the IX symphony, where the emotion felt for the simple fact of feeling alive and in tune with one's natural and human environment is enhanced.
The conviviality we mean is celebrated during a meal interpreted according to the frugal abundance that pursues the degrowth of the excesses of overconsumption and waste. It denounces junk food and the inequalities linked to intensive agriculture and large-scale distribution, proposing an enhancement of peasant agriculture that respects the dynamics of the soil and life, supporting the protection of the biodiversity of traditional cuisines threatened by planetary homologation. It is about developing the values of a society built on frugal abundance. A society that promotes a healthy and quality diet linked to organic farming and the fight against waste. It clearly testifies to the value of what we affirm even a global phenomenon such as obesity, a disease caused by junk food that increasingly afflicts the world.
Be careful, what is called into question with frugal abundance is not all phenomena of growth, but the "society of fake abundance". To conceive of a virtuous society, we must question the domination of consumerism over the whole of life. The starting point must be a change in values. To earn money as much as possible, by all means, by exalting competitiveness, possibly crushing others, and even by destroying nature without hesitation and without limits.
To be aware that wealth is not just money; True wealth can also be having friends, doing interesting things, getting intellectually rich, realizing one's potential, etc. If we question wealth linked only to money, we must also rehabilitate poverty and frugality, which is different from material and moral misery. A form of dignified frugality was a positive value for all societies, and also for ours until about the eighteenth century. Let's not forget that frugality is at the origin of the invention of an important part of every kitchen. In short, we must behave as good gardeners and not as predators.
Frugal Abundance Theory
The relationship between food and frugal abundance aims to promote a tasty, healthy and balanced diet. Someone will say, "But what does abundance have to do with frugality?" I answer that I mean the abundance of biodiversity and food variety with the frugality of consumption, which can be achieved by following the theory of the 5 "Rs": Re-evaluate, Rethink, Reduce, Relocate, Recycle.
As a promoter of frugal abundance I propose to...
- Re-evaluate real food production (junk food aversion);
- Rethink a lifestyle based on conscious, i.e. frugal, quantitative food intake (obesity spectrum);
- Reduce waste (pay attention to labels);
- Relocalize crops (promote biodiversity);
- Recycle as much as possible (circular economy value).
I specify that with the term frugality I am not criticizing the natural phenomena of growth, but our "growth society" where frugality has a negative meaning, linked to deprivation and poverty. Growth as a biological phenomenon is, of course, a wonderful thing. Plants and animals are born and develop. The biological cycle of birth, development, maturation, decline and death of the living and its reproduction are also the condition for the survival of the human species, in harmony with the surrounding plant and animal environment.
In the book The Physiology of Taste, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (my inspirer) defines gastronomy as "the reasoned knowledge of everything that refers to man as a being who feeds" and therefore: natural history, physics, economics, politics, etc. In this sense, the proposal of frugal abundance is a project that has social, agricultural, nutritional, culinary and sensory implications, in short, from the field to the table. But why do we want to promote this vision? Because Western society (and not only) is no longer in symbiosis with nature but exploits it mercilessly, in order to grow infinitely. It is a pity that such a society is not sustainable for the simple fact that it clashes with the limits of nature. It is in fact based on a triple limitlessness: that of the production and therefore of the withdrawal of resources, renewable and non-renewable, that of the production of needs - and therefore of superfluous products - and finally that of the production of waste and consequently of the emission of waste and pollution (of the air, of the earth, of water).
The consequences of this organization are disastrous for agriculture, society, food and health. Just to give an example, if we focus on the agricultural world, it means the impoverishment of the vernacular, that is, that very diversified form of cultivation created to deal with any situation (aridity, frost, excessive heat, floods), applied thanks to a knowledge (also empirical) that concerned the territory and the means to intervene in it.
Industrial agriculture, driven solely by the concern for rent, favors monoculture and genetic manipulation in the service of the interests of agri-food multinationals. As a result, about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops, according to the FAO, has been lost over the past century. Monoculture also has disastrous effects on the landscape, leading to an increasingly monotonous uniformity. Industrial agriculture does not give life to a landscape, it flattens it. Modern economic logic has transformed abundance into varietal poverty and assigned a negative value to frugality. It is for these reasons that I want to promote frugal abundance for our food happiness.
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