Need to See the Fish

Young people and young families all eat significantly less fish than their elders. The MmmmmSeafood project started to work with this problem, and have interviewed young adults and families with children that eat little fish.

The members of these focus groups say that they want to eat more fish. They know about the health benefits, but they want to have easier access to fish and seafood in the supermarket.

New dishes

"So marketing of fish needs a boost", says scientist Joop Luten at Nofima. The young consumer also wants new and exciting dishes, but they have to be easy to make.

It catches how participants described the relation between food and the household management, which crystallizes in the common experience of having 10-15 dishes that rotate on the table during the year. In order to increase fish consumption the challenge is to break into this circle and/or motivating people to add more fish to it.

"We have been involving at the start of the project a large number of stakeholders who deal with seafood processing, in order to share the enormous volume of knowledge that already exists about fish as food , and in order to create new concepts", says Luten.

Culinology

Culinology - a mixture of culinary skills and technology - also plays a role in the MmmmmSeafood project. The concept originated in the USA, where celebrity chefs create refreshing dishes and new food trends.

"We want to combine the expertise of innovative Nordic chefs with knowledge of food technology, so these two very different worlds can achieve new results together", Luten concludes.

More information: www.mmmmmseafood.org