10 things you should know about Nordic Food
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10 things you should know about Nordic Food
- New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto: The Manifesto was developed in 2004 and was signed by chefs representing the five Nordic nation states, as well as Åland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, creating a Nordic sense of ownership for the new ideology. It contains ten value-based principles that guided the development of a new approach to food and territory.
- Nordic food on the map: The Nordics have quickly gained a top spot on the global gastronomic map. In 2018, 64 restaurants received Michelin stars (a hallmark of fine dining quality and restaurants globally) in the Nordic region. There are over 260 Michelin-recommended restaurants across the Region.
- The Copenhagen effect: In 2007, the city of Copenhagen created the ambitious goal of converting to 90% organic ingredients in public canteens. Many other Nordic cities have followed suit by creating equally as ambitious plans. Denmark and Sweden are the second and third biggest
- Protecting genetic diversity: The Global Seed Vault, located on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, is the ultimate security storage for the world’s crop diversity. The Seed Vault conserves duplicates of seed samples that are conserved in gene banks all over the world. NordGen, the responsible institution for the Seed Vault, is dedicated to the safeguarding and sustainable use of plants, farm animals and forest genetic resources.
- Healthy and sustainable diets: The New Nordic diet has similar health benefits as the Mediterranean diet, which has been known to reduce the diseases like risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart attacks. Mediterranean and New Nordic diets are both characterised by the inclusion of mainly plant-based foods with some fish and limited amounts of meat. A person consuming an average Danish diet emits 1.5 times more greenhouse gases than someone consuming a New Nordic diet
- Feeding the next generation: Finland and Sweden have two of the oldest free school meal programmes in the world. School meals are an important part of the educational curricula and meals are seen as holistic pedagogical tools
- Sustainability in dietary guidelines: Sustainability is an emerging component of dietary guidelines in the Nordics. Nordic citizens are recommended to lower the environmental impacts of their diets by eating more plant-based foods and less animal-based food; choosing primarily meat and fish with low environmental impact; eating more dried beans, peas, lentils, and cereals; choosing mainly field vegetables, root vegetables, potatoes, fruits, and berries that store well; choosing perishable products when they are in season; and minimizing waste
- Food waste warriors: For the past 10 years, numerous efforts have been developed to stop the unnecessary waste of food. The result is restaurants using food that would have otherwise been wasted; food companies improving packaging materials to reduce waste; the development of new apps to help food close to its expiry date move off the shelf; and national monitoring programmes and awareness campaigns.
- Small-scale, high-quality: It has never been a better time to be a food artisan in the Nordics. In 2018, the first ever bi-annual Terra Madre Nordic marketplace showcased unique products from the region. From breads made from heritage grains to microbrew beers to cheeses, these products have grown in sophistication and are now more available and accessible to more people.
- New Nordic 2.0: After nearly 15 years of promoting environmental sustainability in the food system, ‘New Nordic Food’ is starting to deconstruct the social sustainability of the food service industry. The first Freja Symposium was launched in 2018 to improve gender equality in the hospitality industry of the Nordic countries.
