The number of people with overweight and obesity continues to increase. This in turn increases the risk of several future chronic diseases – not least among children and youngsters. The Public Health Agency of Sweden has pointed out healthy eating as an opportunity to prevent, for example, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and even mental illness. 

Diet is a complex issue 

What must we eat to feel good is something most of us know. But it's not quite as simple as just having knowledge of advice and recommendations.  

"There is a lot of information, and if we had eaten according to it, the incidence of the problems we see would have been lower. But what we eat and why is more complex than that. We are affected by so many factors, such as availability, portions that get bigger and bigger, advertising and the food messages we encounter – what we see advertising for is often not fruit and vegetables, but calorie-dense food,” says Maria Biörklund Helgesson, researcher in sustainable consumption and production at RISE. 

But then what is a healthy eating habit? Basically, it is about the food on our plate being fibre-rich and nutrient-dense, and for the most part coming from the plant kingdom. A diet that also contributes to a more sustainable food production. To find examples of that type of food, we don't have to look far away. The Nordic pantry contains a number of ingredients and cooking traditions that provide both a sustainable and healthy plate.  

The Nordic pantry shows the way 

In an EU-funded project, Switch, RISE and other partners are working towards a shift towards healthy and sustainable eating habits and dietary behaviour. With Denmark as the initiator, they have formulated the manifesto "New Nordic Food" – a gastronomic manifesto highlighting the Nordic ingredients and cooking techniques that have been developed over a long period of time, such as acidification and pickling. Methods that are a little forgotten but often are both sustainable and healthy.  

"But New Nordic Food is also about the raw materials, that we should eat more from the plant kingdom and more of what is around us, such as fish, shellfish, mussels, seaweed, wild plants and animals, root vegetables, berries, cabbage, peas, beans, rapeseed oil and meat that has been produced in a good way. Food that grows and is grown here. That food is both healthy and sustainable. We should become better at using what is around the corner, and which is also not dependent on a functioning import chain,” says Maria Biörklund Helgesson. 

Several actions interact – not least innovation 

In order to reverse the trend, a number of measures are required. It can be anything from political decisions such as subsidies for healthy food and higher taxes on unhealthy food, that commercial forces such as food companies, grocery stores and restaurants take greater responsibility for what they expose, clear labelling of food in stores or to start with the children. 

“What do we expose our children to in terms of food and food messages? Today they are met with soft drinks, fast food and various temptations every day. Not everyone can handle it," says Maria Biörklund Helgesson. 

New, innovative foods also play an important role in development. At RISE, research and projects are conducted on all parts of the food system, from primary production to product development. It can be about how to reduce salt in different products, how to develop meat substitutes or what our public meals should contain.  

Develop raw materials and products we are not used to eating 

An important part is about developing raw materials and products that we are not so used to using, such as seaweed, algae and insects. Or that the industry processes more of the animals that are raised for consumption and the consumer chooses to eat more parts.  

"In the past, you ate a lot more of the animal, you had a lot of respect for the animal you raised and followed until slaughter. They did not take the best pieces and threw away the rest, but there was pâté, slow cooking, broth and stews of all parts. But it must be done in a way that appeals to those of us who live now, and it must be good,” says Maria Biörklund Helgesson, who believes that we generally need to eat less meat, and when we do, choose meat such as naturally grazed.  

“We need to eat more vegetables but that doesn't mean everyone has to become vegetarians. In meat and fish there are many minerals and vitamins that are difficult to get enough of otherwise, especially for the elderly, sick, children during growth or pregnant women.” 

When the YouTube video starts, all you see at first is the man, the hi-vis clothing and the huge drill. Only when looking more closely do you notice the rapids in the background and the fact that the man in the video is in a harness and suspended in front of the rock face 180 metres above the turbulent water. He works with rock face stabilisation, and the video shows him embedding large bolts into the rock face to prevent rockslides. 

“Norway has countless roads and railways running close to mountainsides, and to ensure that they’re not affected by rockslides, we need to stabilise the rock faces,” explains Thomas Clemm, a physiotherapist and head of corporate healthcare at the Norwegian company Mesta AS. 

Vibrations from drills can cause severe neurological damage 

Rock face stabilisation is actually an entire industry employing some 2,000 people in Norway alone. And while efforts to prevent rockslides and thereby protect both lives and infrastructure are important, they present a major problem: the drills used by rock face stabilisation workers vibrate, which can cause severe neurological damage. 

“When I surveyed our employees a few years ago, we found that they had extremely high exposure to vibrations, and that many of them had problems with, for example, fingertip sensitivity,” says Clemm. 

Vibration injuries – such as vascular injuries, numbness or the loss of fine motor skills in the fingers – are often chronic and comprise the most common occupational injury among men in Sweden today. However, when Mesta AS discovered the extent, they decided to try to do something about it. Clemm contacted the researcher Hans Lindell at RISE, who for many years has led projects aimed at reducing vibrations in the work environment in partnerships between RISE and a large number of companies and organisations affected by vibration injuries. The aim is to reduce vibrations in the work environment. 

“I’d met Hans before and knew that not only was he extremely knowledgeable about vibrations, but also had invented a technical solution that could lessen the vibrations. So, I got in touch and asked whether he and RISE would like to work with us,” Clemm explains. 

Developed vibration damping in both drill handles 

The result was the No Bad Vibes project (Ingen dårlige vibber in Norwegian), with Lindell and his colleagues developing vibration damping for both drill handles, which reduced vibrations to one sixth in one handle and to half in the other. 

“Since the level of injury grows quadratically, this means that the risk of injury, compared to before, is now only one thirty-sixth as high for one hand and a quarter for the other,” Lindell explains.  

But that was not enough. The project has also tested modifying the rock drills with ATVA, a technique that Lindell and his colleagues invented. 

“ATVA entails inserting a weight into the machine that is then connected to the machine via a spring. The laws of mechanics cause it to oscillate backwards and forwards, thereby creating an opposing force to the vibrations from the compressed air.” 

Since these forces are of equal size, they cancel each other out, reducing the vibrations by about eighty percent.  

“We’ve tested ATVA on other machines before and always with the same results, namely that we prove that you can greatly reduce both the vibrations and vibration injuries,” says Lindell. 

For Mesta AS, the damping handles mean that fewer employees will suffer vibration injuries, and Clemm now hopes that machine manufacturers will start incorporating ATVA in their products. 

“The technology that Hans Lindell has developed is a major step forward! He’s someone with many ideas who always sees opportunities, and we’re extremely pleased to have been able to work with him.” 

Beneficial even in the mining industry 

Moreover, people working with rock face stabilisation in Norway are not the only ones who would benefit if more manufacturers incorporated this new technology in their machines. 

“Consider the mining industry, and how many people around the world work with hand-held rock drills under poor working conditions. If machine manufacturers were to incorporate this technology as standard in their machines, it would improve the work environments of very many people. The cheese slicer is probably the only tool to have changed less than drills in the past seventy years, so we’re pleased to have finally been able to do something about it,” says Lindell.

Photos: Mesta AS

Rock face stabilisation in practice

Burgers, sausages and mince – made from soya, peas and beans. Today, we increasingly come across vegetarian options when browsing the chilled and frozen food supermarket sections. At least when visiting larger stores. And it is these burgers and other products similar to meat, known as meat analogues, that are popular with many consumers wanting to eat more vegetarian food. 

“We want to eat food that’s familiar, that we know how to cook and that tastes and feels like meat when chewed,” says Evelina Höglund, a researcher within Food Product Design at RISE. 

Höglund and her colleagues are striving to understand how plant-based proteins – primarily those found in peas and beans – behave together with fibre and other components. This knowledge is required to be able to create a fibrous texture resembling that of meat, since texture is just as important as taste.

Increased interest in Swedish ingredients 

“Many existing meat analogues are based on soya protein because it has practical properties, so there’s a wide range of soya-based ingredients on the market. We’ve also noticed an increasing interest in switching to Swedish ingredients, such as peas and beans. Although we produce a great deal of legumes in Sweden, we haven’t had any industries making ingredients from them. But we’re starting to see that now, which is positive,” says Höglund. 

As more plant-based products enter the market, we also see increasing interest in the nutritional quality of the burgers, sausages and mince made from them. 

Susanne Bryngelsson is a project manager at RISE with a focus on sustainable nutrition: 

“Some vegetarian products use fat sources that aren’t the most optimal when it comes to nutrition. They provide a good texture, but the end product isn’t particularly healthy. There are great opportunities to make a difference by choosing other ingredients. Salt content is also something that we look at.” 

Difficult for the body to absorb iron 

She underlines the fact that some nutrients found in these products may be bound or present in forms that the body is unable to use.  

“For example, many plant-based proteins contain high levels of phytic acid, which makes it difficult for the body to absorb iron.” 

Experience has taught Bryngelsson the importance of considering nutritional aspects at an early stage in the development projects that RISE pursues. One example is the Like:Meat project, which uses a fermentation process to increase nutritional quality. This technique helps, for example, by reducing phytic acid content. Like:Meat is funded by Vinnova and coordinated by RISE, with Lantmännen and Orkla as partners. 

Improved taste with mixed crops 

Back to Evelina Höglund. In her work, she has noticed the benefits of mixing different crops. For instance, in a project to develop a gluten-free pasta, Höglund and her colleagues mixed blue lupin with broad bean. This resulted in a better-tasting pasta than when using a single crop. 

“Another smart move is to mix legumes with cereals as they contain different types of amino acids, which can then complement one another,” Höglund explains. 

This summer saw the publication of the first systematic analysis of the nutritional quality of meat analogues on the Swedish market. It showed that while meat analogues generally have low saturated fat content and relatively high fibre content, they also have high salt content. The study was conducted within the FINEST project, which is funded by Formas with RISE as the coordinating partner.