A legit reason to spend more time eating: "Slow Food" is said to combat stress and help maintain weight. But to reap the benefits, you'll have to learn to love ugly food.

It's 8am on a Friday and I'm madly rushing my way through eggs, tea and toast. If I don't stop to chat, I can get the whole thing over in under four minutes. I chop, stack my fork, chew, gulp scalding tea between mouthfuls, and with one final napkin dab I stand up, ready to go. My partner rolls his eyes and points at the plush surrounds of our holiday rental in Bali. His plate of half-eaten brekkie still has steam rising from it. Well, yeah: I know we're on holiday. And I'm ready to get it started. But as the week goes by, I realise how much I'm on permanent fast forward, racing to get food out of the way so I can snag the pick of the pool chairs or be first on the bus to the temples.

A couple of days later (while inhaling a croissant) I come across an article in a Sydney newspaper on the antidote to this way of eating: the Slow Food movement. Turns out I'm not the only one in need of a nutrition rethink - the group has 85,000 active members in more than 320 countries, and Australia officially joined in June this year. The group was established in 1986 by an Italian named Carlo Petrini as an uprising against the first McDonald's scheduled to be built at the base of the historic Piazza di Spagna in Rome (Petrini and his followers brandished bowls of penne as weapons of protest!). Today, Slow Food is much more than the opposite of fast food - it's evolved into a green-thinking "globesity"-conscious group, whose manifesto is "good, clean, fair food". Slow foodies encourage thinking about nosh in a different way - how is it produced? How fresh and nutritious is it? Does it harm the environment or animal welfare? What does it taste like? Not only that, but studies repeatedly show that slower eaters have lower levels of physical and mental stress, happier weights, are better nourished and may even be more likely to conceive.

I want in. I want to stop being the person who changes her keyboard three times a year because she gets food stuck between the keys. I want to become - in the words of Alison Drover, an ex-chef and co-convivium leader and producer of Slow Food Sydney, who has been living by these principles for three years - a person who leads "a happier, more relaxed life, who uses food to connect and nourish". Drover says Slow Food's job is to make it easier, even for city dwellers, to appreciate the taste and quality of naturally produced, properly prepared food. In Australia, the membership is diverse and includes young families, students, wine-makers, chefs, members of food and wine clubs - people who care about their grub. There are several paths to becoming a slow foodie, Drover tells me (thankfully none that involve eons of chewing or stewing), and when my commissioning editor challenges me to live by the principles for a week, I take a big gulp, mentally wave goodbye to my Diet Cokes and plastic cheese and say, "Yes!"

Markets or marketing?

Step one: Slow Food shopping. Farmers' markets are at the heart of Slow Food (go to farmersmarkets.org.au to find your nearest one), so I rock up at my local growers' markets in Frenchs Forest, Sydney, on the first morning of my challenge. I feel lost. No trolleys or alluring two for one offers here - just a cluster of stalls selling boxes of dull, lumpy fruit and veg. I spot a voluptuous punnet of strawberries good enough for any supermarket display and hurry over for a nibble but, damn it, they taste like water. I'm disappointed but, according to research, I shouldn't be surprised. Findings presented at the 2007 Mediterranean Conference of Agro-Food Social Scientists in Barcelona showed that we choose our vegetables and fruit based on appearance. But after asking testers to rank their fruit preferences twice - once on looks, and secondly on taste - the researchers discovered the ugliest fruit was by far the yummiest.

Bad news: because we judge fresh produce by its cover, supermarkets generally reject the uglies, and opt for their less tasty, chemically "enhanced" counterparts.

Point taken. I move away from the misleading strawberries (which locals in-the-know are studiously ignoring) and take a second look around. It's a good move. Small, dirty apples, unwaxed, sticker-less and grown by the same man who sells them turn out to yield unbeatable crispness, while green beans picked this morning are subtly sweet and crunchy. When rain forces me to take cover, I do it with an organic coffee and a chat with the farmers, who want me to taste and learn - they're totally on to the Slow Food thing and this leads to the discovery of other pleasures. Hello locally baked linseed loaf, smoked pumpkin seeds, pears dipped in dark chocolate, apples stuffed with mascarpone, smoked wild fish... Slow Food's points score shoots way up!

Then it comes back down - it's about twice the price of supermarket stuff. Critics complain the movement is elitist and right now I think they have a point - $27.45 only gets me one small chicken. A 500g jar of raw, unprocessed honey, complete with pieces of "honeycomb" (bad assumption - I chew beeswax later on my toast) costs $10.50. I pay $11 for three plums and eight apples. For two people, my week's grocery bill is usually just shy of $100, so coughing up $220 here isn't sustainable.

"Of course it is," says Drover, who points out that paying for good, nutritious food is an investment in long-term health. "People spend big bucks on iPhones or holidays, when joy in your day can be much simpler - having some decent bread or a really nice cheese." A quick check over my last Visa bill proves I'll spend more money on pub rounds than I will on a day's food. But do I have to go out of my way to a farmers' market? "Fruit and vegetables travelling long distances [what you'll generally find at supermarkets] are more likely to suffer vitamin depletion," says Sharon Natoli, WH nutrition expert and director of Food & Nutrition Australia. Chowing down on locally grown goodies also reduces your chances of ingesting waxes, gases and synthetic chemicals often used to preserve food that travels long distances. And eating produce that's grown seasonally means you'll get more variety (not to mention more affordable prices), "so you're more likely to get everything you need for good health", says Natoli.

The bonus? Almost everything at the farmers' market is organic, biodynamic (a type of regenerative agriculture) or chemical-free - and sometimes all three. I'm convinced.

Spending two-and-a-half hours grocery shopping is a change from my usual Sunday morning hangover recovery and, although my purchases aren't new slim-fit jeans, I walk out with a new kind of shopping buzz.

Savour the flavour

Three days in and I'm highly attuned to how much food philosophies are changing. In the US, Los Angeles City Council have just approved a year-long ban on new fast-food restaurants opening in south LA. However, the world's biggest fast food chain has launched McDonald's Express at local service stations, so you can fuel your car at the same time as your stomach. Then when I read that Wattie's released "instant" baked beans in a fused, frozen sambo (Pop-Tarts-style) in New Zealand, I have to wonder - are these things making our lives better or just putting the "con" in convenient?

I mention Macca's Express to Dr Phil Mohr, a CSIRO behavioural scientist specialising in food, health and consumer attitudes, and he audibly nods down the phone line. "That's a logical step for McDonald's," he says. "These days, there's a growing tendency to take a utilitarian approach to food, to view it as fuel - something you need to address as quickly as possible so [that] you can move on with your life." Now, I'm definitely a culprit of doing that!

Food as fuel: the perfect summary of my deadline attitude. A 2006 study published in the journal Physiology & Behavior shows that women are much more likely to reach for chocolate over something really nutritious when we're stressed (let's face it, we're not talking about reaching for one small square of Lindt 70% here). Research from the University of Calgary in Canada proves it isn't doing us any favours long term. When healthy adults were asked to eat a fast-food, high-fat breakfast and have their mental and physical stress responses tested, the results were illuminating: just one such meal made the subjects more susceptible to mental and physical stress.

As for other clever time-savers, like eating sushi while surfing eBay, researchers at Vanderbilt University in the US recently proved that doing two things at once just makes you ineffective at both of them: our brains "bottleneck" the information if two decision-making operations occur at once. In fact, according to the British Journal of Nutrition, doing anything else while eating - Facebooking, watching Idol - distracts you from recognising signs of satiety. When researchers from the University of Rhode Island, US, had 30 young women eat a lunch of pasta, tomatoes and cheese, the diners consumed an average of 294 fewer kilojoules when they ate the meal slowly and chewed the food thoroughly. So, taking the time to sit down and eat your meals minus distractions will help to keep your happy weight.

The cook-off

Step two: learn to slow-cook. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show we visit one of the major fast-food chains 3.4 times a month. The most common reason given for stopping at the drive-through: "I was in a hurry/didn't have time to cook." With this in mind, and a fridge full of organic food, I decide to see if living the Slow Food life will make me faster in other areas of my life. I've realised that a shockingly small amount of what I eat is natural, so it's time to get familiar with my utensils. Finding fresh easy recipes is a cinch (go to yahoo7.com.au/womenshealth for some beauties developed by Drover) and, after a couple of nights experimenting, I get all domestic. I coo over my homemade spicy lentil and pumpkin soup and mint chicken salad like a mum with a newborn.

On the fourth day I cast off the step-by-step instructions and just go with my gut (which, by the way, is decidedly shrunken after three Diet Coke- and salt-free days). A couple of things go wrong, like when I proudly invite Mum over for a roast at noon and we end up eating at 3pm. But most things, like my organic tomatoes, for example, require minimum interference - serve them fresh with some creamy fetta, torn basil and a dusting of sea salt on crusty bread, and you'll salivate over every mouthful. And alongside my trusty tools - a reasonable set of knives, a single saucepan and my "garden" (a tiny windowsill pot of herbs), they unerringly guide me from Lean Cuisine to dream cuisine.

By lunchtime on day four, my mood has improved, too. I spend a half-hour lunch break concentrating on just that - lunch, and become infinitely more productive in my work. I still have no idea how to cook a casserole or soufflé. But with Slow cooking I don't need to, because I've discovered when you buy things that are truly fresh and of good quality, you don't have to do a lot to them.

Soul food

Step three: take the time to share that pleasure with your mates. I'm not exactly famous for my dinner parties (think Bridget Jones and her string-coloured soup) so eight of my friends are highly amused when I invite them around for a Slow Food dinner party. Over local camembert, organic crackers and my homemade hummus I explain the rules - appreciating the food (or pretending to at least) and each other, don't drink until you pass out, no texting under the table or rushing to another party, and definitely no watching AFL on TV.

"We've forgotten how important it is to sit at the table and enjoy old-fashioned home-cooked food," says slow foodie Drover. "If we don't bring it back, we're in danger of raising a generation of children who don't know how to cook." Not to mention losing precious family recipes passed down from Grandma. I bring this up with my friends, who ask suspicious questions. Have I really cooked all my meals this week? Where do you find the time? And isn't Slow Food just a marketing ploy? They 'fess up to microwaving last night's pizza for breakfast and being so knackered some nights that they just eat toast for dinner. My thirtysomething, mortgage-paying, time-desperate friends sound like me a week ago.

The ethos of Slow Food is, as Natoli puts it, "about keeping your mental and spiritual health in balance" and, judging by the way my guests relax and bond over my home-roasted racks of lamb, kipfler and purple potatoes and butternut pumpkin, I wonder why we don't do this more often.

The finish line

Drover admits that the Slow Food movement in Australia is in its early stages and her goal is to make local and fresh food available to everyone online - not just those in close proximity to a farmers' market. "But speaking with your local butcher or supermarket manager helps," she says. "Ask them to label fruit and veg telling you where in Australia it's from and when it was picked. Some supermarkets are starting to do this and it's encouraging for both consumers and farmers."

Although my food bill has skyrocketed this week, my Visa balance is actually down. Along with my hip measurements. Apparently, you don't need to splurge on that cheap singlet top/another glass of wine/bad takeaway when you already feel nourished. I've discovered that the Slow Food approach isn't about becoming a 1950s housewife, and it still involves whacking leftovers in the microwave when you're too busy to cook from scratch, but it's adding a sprinkling of fresh herbs before you eat them. It's sitting down and sharing a meal with your partner, instead of gulping it while you drive. And, yes, it's a lesson you've heard a million times before, but there's a reason for that. It's the same reason the tortoise won the race - he knew something when he smelt the roses.

Inspired to give slow food a try? Check out our slow food recipes.