Since I’d rather be labeled with a tendency than lumped into a club whose activities I don’t always support, I forgo the noun in favor of an adjective: I think of myself and those who share my mania as “foodish.” Descriptive, yet noncommittal!

Slow Food Nation (and, by extension, Slow Food itself) is held to extraordinarily high standards here--apparently expected to be all things to all people--even as the writer imposes far less stringent demands on himself. It’s one thing to be unable to afford the $65 for munchies at the Taste Pavilion; it’s quite another to state--as if doing so made one the champion of the common man--that attending that outstanding panel wouldn’t have been worth your $20. Wendell Berry is as great a writer and thinker as the United States has ever produced; Vandana Shiva combines heart and science and commitment in a singularly compelling way; Michael Pollan is a wonderfully cogent voice on all food-related issues; Eric Schlosser, as mentioned, is a persuasive speaker on the subject of democracy and justice in the food world; and so on and so forth. To imply that that gathering wasn’t worth the price of a couple of tickets to “Tropic Thunder” hints at some confusion in the priorities department.

As for the audacious, verging on cynical, claim that “most of the audience retired to official Slow Food dinners at gourmet restaurants,” I’m afraid backing that one up would require far more fact-checking than Eric Haas is ever likely to undertake. Until he does, it’s safe to regard it with skepticism, along with the suggestion that, while the Slow Foodies were gorging on truffles, the truly virtuous work was being done elsewhere by young people at vegan potlucks.