It was the dead of winter in Dayton, OH. Snow had been accumulating on the ground for weeks with no signs of letting up. Highs were consistently in the single digits. Snow boots, scarves and two pairs of gloves were necessary when venturing out.

In the chilly embrace of our apartment, buried under layers and layers of clothing, I was doing something that doesn't seem like it should be possible. I was eating a mango.

Dry and crunchy, the mango was a huge disappointment. But this isn't the point. The point is that I was eating the mango at all. Considering the setting, smothered in white, and marveling at how cold I could be inside, I arrived a simple conclusion: Eating a mango in the snow isn't natural.

But it's not just the mangoes. A study performed in 2003 by Iowa State University found that the average distance a piece of fresh produce travels to reach the market (in Iowa) is 1,494 miles. Apples rang in at 1,726 miles, while garlic, carrots, spinach, and strawberries all clocked in at over 1,800 miles. For some perspective, New York City to Albuquerque New Mexico is 1,812 miles. And my mango in Dayton, store officials told me, came from Mexico. They didn't say which city. This means that it could have been near Monterrey in the north, 1,351 miles from Dayton, or Mexico City in the center, 1,668 miles from Dayton, or Delicias in the southeast, 1,796 miles from Dayton. No matter how you see it, it's a long way from home.

We may not realize it when we're squeezing the mango to see if it's ripe, but this lengthy voyage has larger ramifications. Extra packaging -- plastics, cardboard, metals, and wood -- is used, which contributes to the production of waste and growing landfills. But, more importantly, untold amounts of fuel are being expended in the transportation of this tasty tropical fruit, which, as has come to be regarded as fact now, is warming our planet.

This is where Slow Food comes into the picture. Slow Food is an international organization created in Barolo, Italy in 1986 that promotes good, clean and fair food. Members of Slow Food "believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work."

This all seems reasonable. And people seem to agree: Slow Food now boasts over 80,000 members in 850 local chapters worldwide. Chapters are called "convivia" to express the conviviality -- friendliness, liveliness, and enjoyability -- of the environment within every convivia. Convivias offer a place for members to come together and enjoy good food that has been produced according to the tenets of Slow Food. Every chapter is responsible for its own content, promoting local producers and indigenous flavors through farmer's markets, wine tastings, and Taste Workshops.

It may seem obvious that when faced with increasingly bad food from an increasing amount of producers worried about the bottom line the Italians would come to the rescue. But it may not have been so obvious to the Italian who started the organization, Carlo Petrini. In 1986 Petrini organized a demonstration against a McDonald's that was due to open in Piazza di Spagna in Rome, worried that companies like McDonald's were destroying local products and producers by introducing cheaper and inferior products to the market. Soon after the demonstration, he founded Slow Food and issued a manifesto, in which he states: "Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of fast food. In the name of productivity, fast life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer." When the movement took off in the Nineties, Petrini was as surprised as everyone else. "The movement was almost like a game at first; we didn't know it would explode like it did," he said in an interview with Time Europe in 2004.

To fuel the movement, Petrini visited communities where he thought the ideals of Slow Food would resonate, and planted the seeds of slow living. One of them was in my hometown, Chapel Hill, NC. And after a nine-year absence, Petrini came back to Chapel Hill to check on his movement. An event was held in his honor. All the restaurants in town that follow Slow Food's beliefs had kiosks set up, demonstrating the quality of food that Slow Food's philosophy can produce. (Note: They truly outdid themselves.) I met up with Petrini at the event.

"The first time I came here I told people I wanted to create Slow Food, and people asked, 'What's slow food?'" Petrini reminisces. "I explained that it was a simple idea about slow life. And they said, 'This guy is crazy.'"

Petrini is a lovable creature. Full of Italian charm, he gesticulates freely, wildly at times, to emphasize his points. ("Enough with consuming," he cries, shaking his hands frantically.) His logical sequences are brilliant: "We have to have a good metabolism. To eat well. Digest well. Transform well. Give back to the earth. And at that point the earth begins its own metabolism. The earth eats. Digests. Transforms. And gives us food. This is the metabolism of the world." More importantly though, he is down to earth: When I ask him if I can address him informally (I have issues speaking formal Italian), he says, "Thank God! No one has spoken to me informally in years!"

He quotes Hippocratus frequently, the ancient Greek philosopher considered to be the father of medicine. "Food is the first medicine," Petrini says. "Those who spend too little on food now spend more money on medicine later. So eat good food, and eat a little less, but eat well."

With all the health problems related to obesity in society today, this advice makes so much sense it's painful.

This means taking personal responsibility for the food we eat. Petrini calls this being co-producers. "The time has come for us to be co-producers," he says. "Informing ourselves, educating our children, learning about good farming, spending a little more on food, not a lot, but a little bit."

He quotes statistics that show Italians spend 12% of their income on cell phone usage. They only spend 16% on food. "Never in the history of the world have we spent so little on food," he says.

In a speech Petrini gave in 2005, he pointed to a report on the ecosystem that paints a grim picture for the future of our species. "There has been systematic destruction of our ecosystem, pollution of our earth, and loss of biodiversity. In the last 50 years man has created more disaster than in all of human history. Here in this report is the documented scientific proof. And we just go on living like idiots."

But sipping a local beer in a pasture in Chapel Hill a couple years later, looking at how the seed he planted only nine years ago has grown into a powerful social force, the founder of the global movement to protect delicious food felt more positive about the future of humanity.

"It's nice to see the changes, and I do feel more positive about humanity now, but I never said that we would win the battle. I think we have to fight as best we can. This is all we can do."

And if this means giving up snow mangoes, so be it.

To get more information on Slow Food, check out: slowfood.com.