Food for many

A call for a more sustainable future for the Nordic public plate.

Practitioners, suppliers and academics to meet at the FoodHall in Oslo November 5-7  to discuss a new vision for welfare catering based on New Nordic Food.  New Nordic food has developed into a strong brand over the past decade especially within fine dining building on values of localness, sustainability and health. The Nordic cuisine blends in competition with other highly-profiled culinary trends such as the Mediterranian cuisine. But the potential of the Nordic perspective is not limited to inspiring top end restaurants. It holds the potential to be a powerful source of inspiration for food for public food as well. Public food in schools, kindergartens, canteens is an important part of the Nordic welfare model. Traditionally it has been referred to as the cost sector catering since often very limited amounts of funds were available. As a result sourcing strategies has mostly been focused on lowering costs and choosing the cheapest available foods in for procurement contracts.
This trajectory now seems to be challenged by the New Nordic food trend in the public food systems sector. Across Norden a range of significant projects is being developed in schools, kindergartens, canteens and hospitals and this is beginning to create a scenario where lowest price is not necessarily the only goal. This development will an important theme on this year’s “Food for Many” track at the New Nordic Food Conference in November in Oslo. The track will aim at further developing a shared Nordic vision of Food for the Many.

This years conference track builds on the progress achieved at the last New Nordic Food Conference in Helsinki in 2011. The conference presented a palette of best practices of how the public can assume a slightly more ambitious role in terms quality and sustainability. The cases presented covered a wide range of examples of organic and local / regional procurement strategies. The strategies shows that it is not only a matter of stagin new values such as quality, nutrition, ecology and locality but also a matter of strengthening local and regional food economies including opportunities for local growers and processors. This win win situation that holds the potential to offer better food for users of public food services in schools, nursery schools, workplaces, institutions and hospitals AND more and more competitive jobs in the local food industry.

This year’s Oslo conference is planned by a joint Nordic working group and will have particular focus on the potential associated with new communities of practice that seems to offer a good framework for developing innovative projects in cooperation between knowledge brokers such as academics, public catering practitioners, procurement officials and suppliers. The Public plate conference track will aim at further developing a proposal to establish a joint Nordic network that can work to develop and maintain the vision of the New Nordic Food for the Many. The network will aim at working across the Nordic countries and coordinate a closer Nordic co-operation between practitioners in both catering kitchens, procurement officials, and decision makers in the area.
The ambition of the network will be to bind closer together leading development research groups in the field and to strengthen research efforts. Also a joint Nordic education at master level will be on the agenda. Learn more about New Nordic Food Conference and the track on Food for Many here:
http://nynordiskmad.org/fileadmin/webmasterfiles/Arkiv/filer/Konferensprogrammet%202012vers7.pdf

 Bent Mikkelsen, http://purefoodlinks.eu/2012/10/food-for-the-many-new-nordic-food-conference/