Mental HealthComing Late 2009, The Nordic Diet By Trine Hahnemann
The world has suddenly discovered that the so-called "Nordic diet" is comparable in terms of nutrition and healthiness with the well-known sun-ripened Mediterranean diet. Scientists are constantly on the lookout for answers to how food affects our health and how to give people guidelines on a balanced diet that will both keep us healthy and at a normal weight.
Recently, Copenhagen University has been working on developing just such a balanced diet and their findings suggest that the traditional diet, lifestyle and foods produced in northern climates can be very healthy - and environmentally friendly too.
This is particularly good news for people living in the northern part of the world: they can stay healthy eating their own produce without feeling they should resort to expensive and environmentally unfriendly foreign imports.
The Nordic diet is all about eating with the seasons, taking advantage of locally d seasonal ingredients and eating a balanced diet of protein, carbohydrate and fat. Eating vegetables, grains, fruit and fish (but not much meat) has for years been known to be really healthy. And in many ways that is how the northern diet used to be: lots of porridge and breads, fresh seasonal vegetables, and meat only once a week. Mainstay ingredients were a wide variety of grains, berries,vegetables, fish, poultry and game. I don"t believe that everything was better in the old days, and certainly some of the old dishes were heavy and repetitive.
However, I do advocate a diet guided by tried and tested principles combined with the wonderful culinary knowledge that we have today.
The best of the Scandinavian lifestyle also has much to offer. It emphasizes good, homemade - and of ten home-grown - food, where the season is taken into account. In spite of, or perhaps because of, our climate, we tend to live an outdoor life, maintaining our connection with nature, and cycling is one of the main means of transportation in cities and in the countryside. But most importantly, we eat meals together, around a table, where the senses will be nurtured and fulfilled by delicious food and friendly conversation.
Copenhagen University