“Where and why are we running? Our personal lives are suffering terribly,” says Petrini, who started the Slow Food Movement in 1989 to oppose the opening of McDonald’s on Rome’s famous Spanish Steps. Since then, he has been the high priest of eco-gastronomy and of food that appeals to the senses, is clean and hygienic and fetches a fair price to its producers. The movement embraces indigenous farmers, culinary cultures and methods of growing food.

Lending support to his efforts in India is renowned environmentalist, Dr Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, and together they hope that eventually people will subscribe to the ideal of slow food. “Eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, they feel it’s okay to have sex or to get married. But if you ask them about their meals, they say, ‘Oh my parents are busy so we have no time to cook’. It’s a shame; we need to make our food habits better,” says Shiva, who is just back from Kerala where Petrini inaugurated Annam, a food movement for farmers to bolster local produce.

In Mumbai, Petrini and Shiva have been talking about huge hoardings brandishing Nestle’s latest wonder food, probiotic yogurt. Shiva says, “We’re all falling prey to corporate greed. Big firms lie blatantly to the public. This probiotic dahi has ingredients that are actually harmful for health.” Petrini adds, “How many of us actually bother to check out food labels? We are not environmentally aware of our food; we don’t know where it came from or where it was processed. We’re not gastronomes, we’re gluttons.”

Bad eating habits are actually getting us nowhere. “Eat slowly, pause, give food time. Too much haste takes the fun out of eating well, like the thought of only sex takes the fun out of the act of making love,” says Petrini, like a true Italian.

Unless rural food systems and cultures thrive, the development of a country is incomplete. “In fact, America, home of the fast food culture, has taken up slow food very seriously,” he adds.