LAUSR

I was born on a farm in Finland in 1946, during the “baby-boom” after the 2nd World War when life was not easy in a country that was considered having lost the war against our big neighbour that had attacked us. My family has owned the farm from its very start in the late thirteenth century and now I own it. After the war, we had food enough since we had animals and could grow many types of food. Nevertheless, food did not come to the table without major physical effort, I learned that firsthand! Today, we would call many of these foods—rye, barley, oats, potato, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, many sorts of roots, berries, etc.—“functional” healthy foods. However, we also had butter and cheese from the local dairy at a discounted producer price, as all dairy farmers in Finland had at that time. Today, on my farm I grow blackcurrants that are scientifically proven to be very healthy [1]. In comparison with many other berries, the blackcurrant is rich in anthocyanins and proanthocyanins [2], and soluble fibre among many other healthy constituents, thus making it interesting for health-conscious people and industry. Studies have shown that various blackcurrant products lower blood cholesterol, blood pressure and postprandial glucose [1]. My mother was a leader of the local housewife’s organization and was highly appreciated for her knowledge and skills in cooking, and nutritional knowledge obtained from various sources. I had the possibility to watch her in our kitchen and participate as a child in many small jobs with food preparation. This sparked my interest in issues related to nutrition and at University with my roommate, we would cook our own dinner every day. Ever since I have loved preparing meals and am eager to try out new ideas in cooking. One interesting thing in my own diet history occurred: I didn’t like to drink milk from our own cows, instead actively avoided it. Only much later, when I wondered why my children had stomach problems when they were small, did I realize that this could be due to lactose intolerance, which is more common in Finland than in other parts of Europe. So, we found out that I and most of my children are lactose intolerance. The genetic background of lactose intolerance was identified by researchers at my institute in the 1990s [3]. It became clear that lactose intolerance was the wild (original) genotype among humans, and that the tolerance to lactose many people had, had gradually developed in people during centuries of using cow’s milk.