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SCHOOL

Outrage over Stockholm school butter ban

Parents are concerned after some Stockholm schools have chosen to stop serving students real butter on their sandwiches due to new stricter guidelines from the National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket).

Outrage over Stockholm school butter ban

“I question these spreads, what is really in them? Is it OK that the kids are served any old low-fat spread?,” one mother said to daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

When the students in some of the capital’s schools returned after their summer holidays they found that the school canteens had removed real butter as an alternative to spread on the bread served together with the school lunch.

The reason for the change is a decision by the Stockholm City local authority in charge of education (Utbildningsnämnden) to make a schools adhere to guidelines issued by the agency.

Behind the decision are tightened rules in legislation regarding schools serving nutritious food. The local authority chose to make the guidelines from the National Food Agency be the guiding rule for all schools in the area.

“The National Schools Inspectorate, which checks that the schools follow the law recommend that the guidelines are followed, so that’s why we decided to do that,” said Lotta Edholm, Stockholm city councillor in charge of schools to DN.

Edholm also explained to the paper that schools are allowed to serve butter with the bread if the school cuts down on the amounts of saturated fats in the rest of the food served.

“In the end, it is a question for every principal to decide for themselves what will be served, but our interpretation is that it is completely possible to serve butter,” she said to DN.

However, according to Principal Ingela Fondin of a school in the Björkhagen suburb of Stockholm, the information to schools has been impossible to misinterpret:

“The instruction was clear or we wouldn’t have given it up,” said Fondin, to the paper.

“I can’t make my own decisions, as an employee I just have to deal with it,” she told DN.

However, according to the paper, several schools are choosing to serve the low-fat spread Becel instead of the butter – an alternative that some experts are warning could be bad for the children’s health.

“What I have mentioned before is the negative effects this can have when it comes to heart disease. But there is also research that indicates a link to cancer,” said Göran Petersson of the Chalmers University in western Sweden to the paper.

Meanwhile, despite having contacted the school and the local authority to no avail, parents are not happy with the new rules.

“Where’s the freedom of choice? I don’t think politics should decide how and what we should eat, there must be alternatives,” said one parent to DN.

The Local/rm

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FOOD AND DRINK

Danish chef wants to launch gourmet dining to stratosphere

Danish chef Rasmus Munk wants to take high-end cuisine to the edge of space, with plans to serve up a stratospheric dining experience in 2025, his restaurant said Thursday.

Danish chef wants to launch gourmet dining to stratosphere

“The expedition will take place aboard Space Perspective Spaceship Neptune, the world’s first carbon-neutral spaceship,” Alchemist, the Copenhagen restaurant that has earned Munk two Michelin stars, said in a statement.

“They will dine as they watch the sunrise over the Earth’s curvature” at an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,000 metres) above sea level, it said.

For $495,000 per ticket, six tourists will embark on a six-hour journey in a pressurised space capsule that will rise into the stratosphere in a hydrogen-filled “SpaceBalloon”.

The 32-year-old chef and self-confessed space enthusiast will be joining the trip.

READ ALSO: World-famous Copenhagen restaurant to close after 2024

Munk promises “dishes inspired by the role of space exploration during the last 60 years of human history, and the impact it has had on our society — both scientifically and philosophically”.

His menu will be restricted only by his inability to cook food over an open flame.

Many of the ingredients will be prepared on the ship from which the capsule is launched, according to Alchemist, which is ranked fifth among the world’s restaurants in 2023 according to the World’s Best 50 Restaurants guide.

In recent decades, Denmark has emerged as a gastronomical powerhouse on terra firma, with the Copenhagen restaurants Noma and Geranium both having held the title of the world’s best restaurant.

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