LIFE’s anniversary event

With the prospects of New Nordic Breakfast, a speech by the Dean Per Holten-Andersen, chef Claus Meyer’s speech on the new Nordic Diet, prize-giving ceremonies and light jazz with Anders Westfall and co, around one thousand LIFE students and staff found their way to Marmorhallen on Tuesday 8 March to celebrate the Faculty’s birthday.

 

Those attending were furthermore rewarded with free chocolate in large quantities. The chocolate was donated by the Toms Gruppen chocolate company who have formed a partnership with the group of researchers from Department of Food Science who received LIFE’s Business Prize 2011.

 

Watch video clips from the event

 

Dean Per Holten-Andersen's speech:

Good morning and welcome to LIFE’s anniversary. 153 years, young, alive and kicking.

I am particularly pleased to see you today. I have just returned to LIFE. After a back operation and three months’ absence it is even more clear to me how much you students, our staff and the whole institution mean to me. Thank you for the many messages, flowers, bottles and mails and a special thank-you to Erik the associate dean who took over at short notice and covered for me.

I hope that you have had an opportunity to taste and gain inspiration from our very special new Nordic breakfast made for us by the cooks Mathias Holt and Lasse Skov-Larsen.

 

We will be hearing much more about the New Nordic Diet today.

We have been through hard times at LIFE and we are still affected by them. Budget cuts have hit LIFE for the second consecutive year and almost all units have been affected. We all need to contribute to the national recovery of the Danish economy.

So there are probably some of you in this room today who do not think that we have much to celebrate. I understand that and deeply sympathise with that.

In spite of this, we are still a Faculty with a great many strengths. We have excellent teachers, dialogue- oriented students, researchers who are working inter-disciplinarily and in collaboration with industry.

 

Therefore, it makes me happy and proud that, in spite of the cutbacks, a strong commitment can still be felt across LIFE. For it is you – and you alone – who are to ensure that LIFE will continue to be able to make a distinct and decisive difference to the society we are part of. In short: thank you for your strong sense of solidarity and for the teamwork that continue to characterise LIFE.

And, indeed, there are many positive things taking place at Frederiksberg Campus:
Forest & Landscape has moved in to a very attractive new house at Rolighedsvej.

Soon we will be officially opening the new University Hospital for Family Animals, and the Campus stables will be opened. This all contributes to making LIFE an even better place to study and carry out research.

 

In near future, students at LIFE will also benefit from funds from the University of Copenhagen initiative ‘Education at its best’ where we have received 20 per cent of the funding. I am pleased with that and so are students and teachers.

 

That we are all working for a sustainable future becomes clear when you look at LIFE’s research and education.

It is and will remain a huge challenge in terms of sustainability to provide food for the growing population of our planet, to find new types of energy, new forms of medicine and new ways to live in cities and rural areas.

To quote a well-known scientist: ”Over the next 50 years we who live on this planet must produce more food than the total populations of the earth have eaten altogether over the last 10,000 years”.

We are among the front-runners in terms of finding new and sustainable ways to produce food.

We are strong players when it comes to new and sustainable ways to produce energy.

We have the expertise to find new and sustainable ways to produce drugs.

 

We are front-runners in the development of sustainable cities and landscapes.

 

I could go on like that. Today, we have chosen to focus on one of LIFE’s large projects – OPUS ('Optimal well-being, development and health for Danish children through a healthy New Nordic Diet')

OPUS is a good example of how we make a difference at LIFE. In many ways, OPUS is one of the most remarkable Danish research projects in recent times. It is ambitious to aim to create a new, sustainable Nordic food culture. It involves food production, animal welfare, energy and environmental aspects, traditions, etc.

In LIFE’s own supermarket we study the health effects of the new Nordic Diet together with 200 test subjects. More that 1,000 school children from all over Denmark are going to taste the New Nordic Diet, we carry out action research with the best cooks in Denmark, work together with other universities. And only last Friday, we helped give minister for health, Bertel Haarder an insight into 150 upper secondary school students’ perspectives on how some of the health challenges of the Danes can be solved through the New Nordic Diet.

 

You can read more about all this (in Danish) in LIFE’s new theme booklet which we will give you today. With the theme booklet we have added recipes that you can take home and which will help you make a small food revolution in your own kitchen. Happy food revolution! Indeed, it is worth appreciating that Denmark is more peaceful than many other places in the world. Here we can talk about a food revolution!