ABSTRACT
Slow Food (SF) has increasingly established itself as an influential and controversial actor on the scene of alternative food networks advocacy. Parallel to the international ascent of its public visibility, this cultural and economic actor started to draw much attention within the scientific community. To consider SF as a cultural intermediary helps us to focus on both its economic and its cultural role as two indissoluble sides of its working, and SF itself as evolving through the continuous adjustment of this Janus-faced nature, thereby contributing to the shifting boundary between economy and culture. In particular, under the aegis of the Foundation for Biodiversity, SF has broadened the scope of its mission and the width of its audience, trying to position itself as an advocate for both consumers and producers, involved in both obesity-afflicted countries as well as in the poverty-plagued ones. Petrini himself acts as a crucial cultural intermediary through his contribution as a freelance journalist for nationwide newspapers.
