Håkan Holmgren runs Ekoaffären, an ecological food boutique (i.e. a little grocery store of healthy things) in Vasastan. He came to talk to the Stockholm Food Movement meetup on September 8th, and shared with us his ideas about how to change the way people eat. We enjoyed his talk, and he enjoyed the free publicity.
“We could advertise the same way the ICA does, but unfortunately when we advertise, we have to pay the newspaper. So we have to make our place known a little bit by rebelling so we try to do things like coming to meetups like yours instead. This way, we skip paying the newspaper, and we get to talk directly to our customers.”
They do other things differently, too. “We used to talk to people about how they shouldn’t eat food with pesticides on it, but there isn’t actually much proof about that. People emailed us and called us to say that what we were claiming wasn’t proven.”
We’re in a time when people have a really hard time figuring out how to eat best. Do they follow rules about what foods to eat, or substances to avoid? How can you tell whether something frozen, pesticide-free, and from far away is better, or local and fresh, but with pesticides? It’s complicated, and most of us are not nutritionists nor environmentalists.
An audience member wanted to know whether taste by itself was a good way to tell the good from the bad. Håkan thought it was certainly a good place to start. “Judging the nutrients of food, the overall health benefits of it, that’s actually difficult. Judging the taste is the best way. You can really feel the difference in the taste of a food.”
Start with something simple, he says. “I think the first thing I want to do is to make people eat seasonally. I mean, skip the tomatoes in jars — there’s your first challenge. Maybe soon we will be ready to eat insects and other lovely products, but the larger market will have other problems to deal with first.”
Starting with fresh tomatoes is definitely an easier change to get people to make than getting them to try bugs. Still, there are always leaders in every movement, and Håkan thinks that chefs have a prominent role to play.
“I think chefs have to be one of the frontiers for change. They have to say something because they know so much about food. But they can’t keep their knowledge to themselves.” Top chefs are at places like Gastrologik. “Those are lovely places but who goes there? Those chefs are great but they should say more about those things on TV, where more people will hear them.”
When Håkan worked in a restaurant, he tried to increase the level of ecological produce. The boss was initially against it, thinking it would be way too expensive, “but when we did it, we actually lowered by price by 20% because we used all of the produce, not just some of it.”
Minimising food waste makes a much bigger difference to the overall expense of food than choosing ecological or conventional food. “At Ekoaffären, instead of throwing away all the vegetables, we sell it for half price. I love that box. There are matured apples, full of flavours and sweetness but people don’t buy those. They should, though. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
Author
Kirsten Zerbinis was following the new media story. Now she’s creating it as the Co-founder of a media technology startup.