New Nordic Cuisine and Culture

 

One of the DIS locations in Copenhagen.

Today we had a lecture by Jonatan Leer, held at DIS in Copenhagen. We had an overview on the history of food in Denmark and what the New Nordic cuisine movement has looked like for the public and specialized restaurants. What interested me most was the comparisons between Minnesota and Denmark; Minnesota and Denmark are comparable in size, but I thought that because Minnesota is a state that is affected by federal policies it would be different than Denmark because they have their own national policies, but it was interesting to hear from Jonatan how much EU policies affect Danish agriculture and cuisine. For example, in my last post I talked about the products that were labeled as 60-90% organic, and this is due to overarching EU policies that dictate what can and cannot be labeled as organic and what makes something organic in the first place. The tension that could occur as a result of Danish farmers and producers not being able to follow rules that were put in place by their legislators but instead having to follow EU polices is something that I want to continue to explore as we continue on this trip. Jonatan brought up how climate change is also affecting the regulations that are currently in place: there are specific fishing quotas for all of the EU member states per individual species, but climate change is changing the migration and living patterns of many kinds of fish and seafood and those quotas may not hold up in five years when the primary species available in Denmark are no longer the ones that they were initially allowed to fish. We will be visiting a farm tomorrow and I would like to speak to the farmers and get their perspectives on these issues and how they feel their farm fits into the New Nordic movement.