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In a recent article in Finland's Swedish speaking newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, Sara Björklund alleged that Finns continue to reduce their consumption of red meat. Information is said to come from the research institute Luke:
Björklund's reporting continues: Another trend that has been seen for several years is an increase in the consumption of grains. Another trend that has been seen for several years is an increase in the consumption of grains. According to Mikkola, the increase is due to the popularity of oat products.
In 2019, a similar proposition was made by researchers at Luke. They published a report where they claimed that if all Finns adopted a vegan diet, then the release of greenhouse gases would decrease by an astonishing 40%. The report was not peer-reviewed, and despite the fact that English is the lingua franca of the academy, the authors chose to use uralic-Finnish, the most remote of Finland's two official languages, and to send the report straight to the prime ministers office.
The same year, another researcher at the department of agriculture at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, Dr. Tuomisto, claimed that livestock contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere compared to transportation (Tuomisto, 2019):
In December 2020, the administrative management of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry chose to market the study on its Twitter account:
In 2022, nutrition researchers at the University of Helsingfors, Dr Erkkola et al. from the Department of Food and Nutrition, also at Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, published a study that addressed consumption of animal source food. The papers headline wrote: A slow road from meat dominance to more sustainable diets: An analysis of purchase preferences among Finnish loyalty-card holders.
Now note that Drs. Erkkola and Tuomisto are both employed by the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. Also note that Luke, the research institute, reside in the same building complex.
Are Björklund's [Luke staff]'s, Tuomistos, and Erkkola's et al's statements and claims really true (consistent with science)?
To sort that out I use my own model for Rational Entrepreneurial Thinking (Österberg, 2021 a, b). It starts with epistemic vigilance - you are simply a little suspicious about various claims (Sperber et al. 2010), followed by numeracy (Brooks och Pui, 2010), and disjunctive reasoning (Stanovich, 2009).
Common knowledge about food and nutrition is that our ancestors added animal source food to their diet millions of years ago (Mann, 2018).
3.5 million years ago, they added bone marrow (McPherron et al. 2010; Thompson et al. 2019). 200 000 years after our genus had emerged (2.8 Mya; Villmoare et al. 2015) they ate meat (Pobiner, 2016).
It's also common knowledge that this new diet started a process of reducing their guts and expanding their brains - from the occipital lobe and forward (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995; Pringle, 2016).
For a more comprehensive orientation about the history of human diet: Österberg (2019) "Perception versus facts": What is the future for sustainable food? The case for prospective thinking (UH)
Two years prior to Luke-researchers and Dr. Tuomisto made their claims, international researchers had shown that the production of animal source food in the western world didn't have any significant impact on the climate (White and Hall, 2017). This was followed by another study showing that the production of dairy has an even smaller impact (Liebe, Hall och White, 2020).
And because Dr. Tuomisto's claim lacked any reference and because her claim deviated from the scientific picture, I raised the issue for discussion with colleagues at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry in January 2021. And because Dr. Tuomisto used FAO's Dr. Mottet as a reference for her claim, I also discussed the issue with Dr. Mottet.
Dr. Mottet rejected Tuomisto's way of using her and FAO's data. The year before Dr Tuomisto published her article, Dr Mottet had straightened out the issue together with Henning Steinfeld: Cars or livestock: which contribute more to climate change?
In addition, data was available from Finland's Center for Statistics. This was shown by SLC's chairman Mats Nylund in the article Disinformation about food, which was published in HBL during spring, 2019.
It reads: according to Central for Statistics, 74 % of all climate related emissions in Finland originate from the energy sector and the burning of fossil fules. Only 12% of the emissions originate from agriculture. Of the emissions from agriculture in Finland, it is estimated that 56 percent comes from arable land and 44 percent from livestock production. In plain language, This means that only 5 percent of Finland's climate emissions originate from livestock production.
Add the Biogenic Carbon Cycle to the model.
When I brought up the error in Dr. Tuomisto's article with colleagues, the work climate deteriorated so to speak. It was not popular to question colleagues or the prevailing "zeitgeist" at the faculty. Especially if they spoke uralic-Finnish.
And when I published it on Twitter and included the Faculty and Dr. Tuomisto, I was met by silence.
When I now search for Dr. Tuomisto's article, a correction shows up. It's Dr. Tuomisto herself, who, after I pointed out the inaccuracies, sent a correction to the journal. There she presses the following:
Comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of livestock with the transportation sector was formally misleading.Here is the correction:
Adding to that, Dr. Erkkola et al. own main results show the following:
The abstract states the following:
Red meat dominated the purchase preferences and showed the highest persistence over time.Several questions emerge:
Why didn't Dr. Tuomisto reach out to me to say thank you?
Why didn't Dr Erkkola put forward the main result of their study in the headline?
Why didn't Björklund include the above in her reporting?
Isn't fact checking important for journalists?
In conclusion. Finns continue to eat healthy animal-source foods (Erkkola et al. 2022). Animal-source foods are important for physical and mental health (Dehghan et al. 2018; Dobersek et al. 2020, 2021; Ede, 2019; Itkonen et al. 2020; Johnson et al. 2019; Ylilauri et al. 2019) and have little to no impact on the climate (CLEAR, Biogenic carbon cycle; Liebe, Hall och White, 2020; White och Hall, 2017). Livestock is also important to influence soil health through so-called regenerative production (Rowntree et al. 2020).
There a downside, Finns also eat a lot of processed and ultra-processed foods. That's bad for their physical and mental health (Hall et al. 2019; Lustig, 2017). One can compare with what Vepsäläinen et al. (2017) highlights as extra important information in their paper:
High availability of fruits and vegetables in the home did not seem to protect the children from the effect of the sugar-enriched foods (p. 1237).Why do people conform to non-scientific propositions?
The answer to such a question are biases or mental fallacies. But there are more than 200 of them, so which one's fit the current examples?
One important fallacy to take into account is the Continued influence bias:
“Misinformation continues to influence memory and reasoning about an event, despite the misinformation having been corrected” (Cacciatore, 2021).Another thing is the fact that Finland has two official languages, and therefore two dominant cultures: the nation-forming Swedish-speaking culture based enlightenment thinking, and the Uralic-Finnish culture based on national romanticism and tribalism.
Learn more about the difference between Romanticism and Enlightenment thinking.
The area we now refer to as Finland was dominated by Sami people until ~1000 AD, then people from Sweden started a process of including south of Finland to the Swedish Kingdom (Lamnidis et al. 2018; Sjövall, 2019).
From the ending the Viking era, ~1050 until 1808, southern Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom. In 1550, Helsingfors was founded by King Gustav Vasa ( 1496 - 1560), and in 1640 the Swedish Queen Christina (1626-1689) and governor general Per Brahe d.y. (1602-1680) started the first university in the East part of the kingdom - Åbo Royal Academy. Already established was Uppsala university (1477) and the Academia Gustaviana (1632), later university of Tartu (Dorpat).
From the ending the Viking era, ~1050 until 1808, southern Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom. In 1550, Helsingfors was founded by King Gustav Vasa ( 1496 - 1560), and in 1640 the Swedish Queen Christina (1626-1689) and governor general Per Brahe d.y. (1602-1680) started the first university in the East part of the kingdom - Åbo Royal Academy. Already established was Uppsala university (1477) and the Academia Gustaviana (1632), later university of Tartu (Dorpat).
The implication was that the renaissance and enlightenment movement (Pinker, 2018) was brought to the then Eastern part of the Swedish Kingdom. Another important thing to take into account was language. The trading language across the Baltic sea was Swedish.
In the Forest north of the county of Nyland lived tribes who spoke different uralic-languages which had no written culture. During the 1500s, a priest by the name Mikael Agricola (1510 – 1557), made the first Finnish translation of the bible.
In 1810, after the debacle of Sveaborg, when Russia overtook control of the Eastern part of Sweden, a national-romantic or etno-nationalist movement emerged - Fennomania. Members of this movement conformed to the [false] claim that uralic-Finns constituted the indigenous population.
In connection with the change of capital, from Åbo to Helsingfors, the Åbo Royal Academy changed name to Imperial Academy (Kejserliga akademin) and was moved 168 km to the east to the new capital.
In 1831, Finnish Literature Society was founded, and four years later, in 1835, Elias Lönnroth (1802-1884) published Kalevala, a compilation of myth's that had been traded by different tribes by oral tradition. This became the starting point for Uralic-Finns written culture.
In his third Gifford lecture of 2019, Mark Pagel, professor of biological anthropology, use Finland as a second example of tribalism. He shows a map that correspond with the treaty of Nöteborg (1323), and claim that people from Finland's two populations don't intermarry with one another.
One effect of this tribal thinking is that the University of Helsingfors use uralic-Finnish in their public communication. This is based on the premise that its important to sustain Finland's original language (which is the languages spoken by the Sami population), and that researchers who arrive to Finland should learn uralic- but not Swedish-Finnish.
In conclusion, and by the famous principle ‘What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas’, whatever is communicated or discussed within the Uralic-Finnish culture remain as it was within the Uralic-Finnish culture.
One such thing is that Finland was part of the Seven countries study. And because Finland has two cultures, they sampled data from two cohorts: Åbo, and north Karelia.
But we don't know so much about the result from Åbo, because, in a national-romantic or etno-nationalist tradition, that result was excluded in favor of the result from North Karelia Project.
And what did the result from North Karelia Project show?
According to the University of Helsingfors, they manage to convince people to lower their intake of butter and salt.
What happened next?
Well, according to Statistics Finland, the prevalence of Alzheimer's started to increase. Significantly.
In the Forest north of the county of Nyland lived tribes who spoke different uralic-languages which had no written culture. During the 1500s, a priest by the name Mikael Agricola (1510 – 1557), made the first Finnish translation of the bible.
In 1810, after the debacle of Sveaborg, when Russia overtook control of the Eastern part of Sweden, a national-romantic or etno-nationalist movement emerged - Fennomania. Members of this movement conformed to the [false] claim that uralic-Finns constituted the indigenous population.
In connection with the change of capital, from Åbo to Helsingfors, the Åbo Royal Academy changed name to Imperial Academy (Kejserliga akademin) and was moved 168 km to the east to the new capital.
In 1831, Finnish Literature Society was founded, and four years later, in 1835, Elias Lönnroth (1802-1884) published Kalevala, a compilation of myth's that had been traded by different tribes by oral tradition. This became the starting point for Uralic-Finns written culture.
In his third Gifford lecture of 2019, Mark Pagel, professor of biological anthropology, use Finland as a second example of tribalism. He shows a map that correspond with the treaty of Nöteborg (1323), and claim that people from Finland's two populations don't intermarry with one another.
One effect of this tribal thinking is that the University of Helsingfors use uralic-Finnish in their public communication. This is based on the premise that its important to sustain Finland's original language (which is the languages spoken by the Sami population), and that researchers who arrive to Finland should learn uralic- but not Swedish-Finnish.
In conclusion, and by the famous principle ‘What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas’, whatever is communicated or discussed within the Uralic-Finnish culture remain as it was within the Uralic-Finnish culture.
One such thing is that Finland was part of the Seven countries study. And because Finland has two cultures, they sampled data from two cohorts: Åbo, and north Karelia.
But we don't know so much about the result from Åbo, because, in a national-romantic or etno-nationalist tradition, that result was excluded in favor of the result from North Karelia Project.
And what did the result from North Karelia Project show?
According to the University of Helsingfors, they manage to convince people to lower their intake of butter and salt.
What happened next?
Well, according to Statistics Finland, the prevalence of Alzheimer's started to increase. Significantly.
Österberg (2022): Is Alzheimer's Disease just another form av diabetes? The case of Finland
Another factor that comes into play is work climate (Amabile, 1996; Ekvall, 1996: Ekvall and Ryhammar, 1998; Locke, 1976). Common knowledge in organizational psychology, is that decentralization and freedom to speak your mind, explains organizational well-being as well as organizational performance.
In February 2022, Helsingin Sanomat published an article about the work climate at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. A researcher had contacted them to report that freedom of expression had been suppressed at the faculty. The researcher chose to remain anonymous (Parikka, 2022).
In may be that the decision to promote uralic-Finnish at the University of Helsingfors, has facilitated tribal thinking.
See min presentation from International Dairy Federations global Conference 2021 in Copenhagen:Why do people hate agriculture (The case for rational entrepreneurial thinking).
Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).
Another factor that comes into play is work climate (Amabile, 1996; Ekvall, 1996: Ekvall and Ryhammar, 1998; Locke, 1976). Common knowledge in organizational psychology, is that decentralization and freedom to speak your mind, explains organizational well-being as well as organizational performance.
In February 2022, Helsingin Sanomat published an article about the work climate at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. A researcher had contacted them to report that freedom of expression had been suppressed at the faculty. The researcher chose to remain anonymous (Parikka, 2022).
In may be that the decision to promote uralic-Finnish at the University of Helsingfors, has facilitated tribal thinking.
See min presentation from International Dairy Federations global Conference 2021 in Copenhagen:Why do people hate agriculture (The case for rational entrepreneurial thinking).
Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).
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