Overview

As a famous chef I feel a responsibility to use my position to help make a more healthy, sustainable, and just food system. Growing up in a family with a fish store I learned a lot about seafood and about quality from an early age. 

I have long enjoyed Japanese cuisine, and my first idea related to sustainability was to source more food locally to serve Nordic produce with Japanese flavours and techniques. 

Working in this way over time I learned about the changes to fish stocks, the impact of environmental conditions on individual species such as mackerel, and the complexity behind sourcing ingredients when you consider multiple aspects of sustainability. 

One ingredient I am very passionate about is seaweed – how it cleans the water, how it is high in nutrition, and how it can be used in so many ways we haven’t even figured out yet! It has been used in Asia for millennia, and we import nearly all of it at the moment. But we can cultivate it in the Nordics. 

I am always experimenting with seaweed and working to help further develop knowledge and create experiences for guests where they are open to try it in new ways. When you connect with something familiar to people already – like pesto – you can include a new ingredient and people are more open to try it.

Key partners

• Suppliers who cultivate, fish, raise, and make ingredients and food with care for the people and the planet

• People who dare to try something new, whether at home or in a restaurant

• Other chefs who inspire us as a community to keep innovating and sharing new ways to prepare and serve delicious, healthy food

• Companies like Strawberry who take bold action that has real impact on the supply chain and customer experiencing new ingredients, flavours, and techniques

Alignment with the EAT-Lancet Commission 

Working at a big company like Strawberry I have had access to procurement tools that are not available in an independent kitchen, like the ones where many of my chef friends work. Strawberry’s sourcing system allows chefs to see many aspects of environmental and social impact at the same time that supports decisions aligned with the EAT-Lancet Commission. I have learned a lot about the social impacts of procurement choices this way, particularly about worker rights. Making it easy for chefs to see the multiple impacts of different options at the same time – greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, human rights – is key for us to be able to change what we buy. 

Lessons Learned

One of the most important things that I have learned is that food not only needs to be local or seasonal, but also to be good for the planet – for biodiversity, for emissions, for overall health. A challenge is that it can be hard for most people to expand their way of thinking about what a healthy plate looks like, and here I think chefs play a key role in inviting people to try different, tasty meals to open up to new possibilities.

Next steps

• For more seaweed to be available at a large scale I need collaborators to build the infrastructure to make it accessible, and other innovators who will develop new products and ways of using seaweed in meals

• I will keep working creatively, not only in the kitchen as a chef but behind the scenes to inspire people and to enable other chefs to do the same, with both seaweed and other foods.