ORONOKO TOWNSHIP, Mich. — While there's no shortage of fast food junkies out there, Paul Landeck is hooked on "slow food."

He's among a growing number of people from Hawai'i to Michigan and beyond who are embracing the slow food movement, which is less about the speed with which a meal is served and more about preserving and celebrating a region's agricultural diversity and culinary heritage.

"It's important to just preserve the art of sitting down around a table and enjoying one another's company," says Landeck, vice president and general manager of Tabor Hill Winery & Restaurant. "That's really where it starts."

In some places, people committed to eating and learning more about the food produced near where they live call themselves "localvores."

In Hawai'i, the 3-year-old Slow Food O'ahu, which has about 60 members, is fighting to limit genetic modifications to taro, the roots of which are made into poi, one of the state's best known foods, says group co-leader Karen Miyano. In Hawaiian folklore, taro is considered to be a sacred ancestor of native Hawaiians, linking them to Island soil.

"This is the most important crop to the Hawaiian people," says Miyano, who works as a personal chef.

ITALIAN FOUNDER

An Italian named Carlo Petrini started the slow food revolution in 1986 as a way of protesting the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome. He founded an international organization, called Slow Food, dedicated to reviving the pleasures of dining and promoting the connection between plate and planet.

Petrini has written a book, "Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair," that is to be released next month.

In January 1996, Landeck established what he says is the first group of slow food enthusiasts in the United States. About a dozen people attended the first meeting more than 11 years ago; the group's membership now stands at 70.

Members of Slow Food Michiana, based in southwestern Michigan near the Indiana border, get together five or six times per year for events. They usually meet at restaurants to hear someone speak about some aspect of food and to enjoy leisurely meals featuring locally produced fruits, vegetables, meats and wines. Nonmembers are welcome to participate.

The group arranges its dinner get-togethers by contacting restaurants weeks in advance and working with them on the menus. Meals always have themes, and past ones include Japanese, Spanish, French and Indian cuisines, a pig roast and a dinner that remained a mystery until it was served.

Members have also enjoyed Jewish, Amish and Kurdish meals. Petrini has dined twice with the group, Landeck says.

The number of slow food groups in Michigan, one of the nation's most agriculturally diverse states, has grown from one to six since Landeck founded his group. About 12,000 people are in the 150-plus local chapters in the U.S., and worldwide there are about 80,000 members.

"It's a way of appreciating our local food heritage and building community, by bringing people together to form connections so food isn't just about nutrition, it's about the social component, it's about the sharing, it's about having fun," says Melinda Curtis, an independent marketing and public relations consultant to the Michigan Department of Agriculture who founded Slow Food Detroit.

FILM FESTIVALS

Up for dinner and a movie? Barry Infuso, who established Slow Food Tucson six years ago, says his 100-member group organizes a film festival each January that includes a meal after each flick. "Chocolat" and "Babette's Feast" are among the movies that have been shown.

"The money we raise from that goes to support local food projects in Tucson," says Infuso, a culinary arts instructor at Pima Community College and a food writer for a local publication.

Grace Singleton says the focus of her 75-member Ann Arbor-based group, Slow Food Huron Valley, which she founded in November 2002, is helping people to learn more about the food and to identify local producers and specialty crops.

"I think it's really important to recognize that there's a diversity of crops and a diversity of agriculture that is starting to be lost in the U.S.," says Singleton, managing partner of Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor.

She says some varieties of apples, for example, have been developed so that they look appealing and store well "but they don't taste very good. I think we got used to that in the U.S. and we didn't realize what we were losing."

Mike Hamm, an agriculture professor at Michigan State University whose scholarly work focuses on local connections between farmers and consumers, says buying food from producers within the state helps Michigan's sagging economy, hurt by plant closings and layoffs in the automotive industry.

"With Michigan having such economic challenges right now, I think there's a lot to be said for taking the $16 to $20 billion of food expenditures each year by our population and internalizing those sales as much as possible," says Hamm, adding that at least 25 percent of his family's grocery budget goes toward locally produced food.