Carlo Petrini, a charismatic Italian who writes about food and wine, started Slow Food with friends who shared his notion that leftist politics and gastronomic pleasure could be happily married. The international organization has grown to 86,000 members and become an industry in Petrini's hometown, Bra, Italy. There are Slow Food restaurants, a university and a hotel. You can buy a cashmere truffle-hunting vest embroidered with the Slow Food snail logo at the main office in Bra.

The group's budget is about $39 million, and subsidized by the Italian government. Much of the organization's work involves identifying traditional foods, like Ethiopian white honey or Amalfi sfusato lemons, and designing ways to help the people who produce them.

Its philosophy — that food is about much more than cooking and eating — is often hammered home by Petrini on his frequent trips around the world.