Dietary composition and nutrient content of the New Nordic Diet.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the dietary composition of the New Nordic Diet (NND) and to compare it with the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR)/Danish Food-based Dietary Guidelines (DFDG) and with the average Danish diet. DESIGN: Dietary components with clear health-promoting properties included in the DFDG were included in the NND in amounts at least equivalent to those prescribed by the DFDG. The quantities of the other dietary components in the NND were based on scientific arguments for their potential health-promoting properties together with considerations of acceptability, toxicological concerns, availability and the environment. Calculations were conducted for quantifying the dietary and nutrient composition of the NND. SETTING: Denmark. SUBJECTS: None. RESULTS: The NND is characterized by a high content of fruits and vegetables (especially berries, cabbages, root vegetables and legumes), fresh herbs, potatoes, plants and mushrooms from the wild countryside, whole grains, nuts, fish and shellfish, seaweed, free-range livestock (including pigs and poultry) and game. Overall, the average daily intakes of macro- and micronutrients in the NND meet the NNR with small adjustments based on evidence of their health-promoting properties. CONCLUSIONS: The NND is a prototype regional diet that takes palatability, health, food culture and the environment into consideration. Regionally appropriate healthy diets could be created on similar principles anywhere in the world.

Safety evaluation of some wild plants in the New Nordic Diet.

One of the dietary components in the New Nordic Diet, is plants from the wild countryside. However, these may have a high content of bioactive components, some of which could be toxic in larger quantities. The objective of this paper is to outline a strategy for safety evaluation of wild plants not covered in current food compositional databases and to apply the method for selected plants used in the New Nordic Diet recipes. Four examples of typical wild edible plants were evaluated (stinging nettle, sorrel, chickweed and common lambsquarters), and based on substantial equivalence with known food plants the majority of the bioactive components reported were within the range experienced when eating or drinking typical food stuffs. For most compounds the hazards could be evaluated as minor. The only precaution found was for common lambsquarters because of its presumed high level of oxalic acid. It is concluded that a substance-by-substance evaluation of intake by equivalence to common foods is a useful and efficient strategy to evaluate the safety of newly introduced wild edible plants. Further evaluation and better compositional analyses are warranted before a daily consumption of significant amounts of wild edible plants can be generally regarded as safe.

Guidelines for the New Nordic Diet.

OBJECTIVE: Diet has a significant impact on health, and ensuring that the population eats a healthy diet remains a public health challenge. Research is needed in order to improve the palatability of a healthy diet and make it attractive to the consumer. It has also been suggested that dietary recommendations should be tailored to regional conditions. The OPUS (Optimal well-being, development and health for Danish children through a healthy New Nordic Diet) project investigates whether it is possible to develop a healthy New Nordic Diet (NND) that is palatable, environmentally friendly and based on foods originating from the Nordic region. The present paper describes the overall guidelines for the NND, developed and investigated in the multidisciplinary, 5-year OPUS research project. All guidelines are described in relation to the key principles: health, gastronomic potential and Nordic identity, and sustainability. RESULTS: The NND is described by the overall guidelines: (i) more calories from plant foods and fewer from meat; (ii) more foods from the sea and lakes; and (iii) more foods from the wild countryside. These overall guidelines result in a set of proposed dietary components which will be presented in a subsequent paper. CONCLUSIONS: Both the guidelines and the diet are composed taking the potential health-promoting properties and Nordic identity of the NND into account, as well as concern for environmental issues and gastronomic potential.