A large Scandinavian hotel chain is to banish pork from breakfast at the behest of the group owner’s wife — a globally active climate change campaigner.
With over 150 hotels and resorts across Norway and Sweden, Nordic Choice Hotels is a significant player in the Scandinavian market, but has lost faith in the power of free choice, forcing their guests to go green in the morning. The change comes just weeks after the United Nations pushed a report claiming to have linked bacon and sausages with cancer.
The chain has been steadily greening their food choices for nearly a decade, introducing Organic breakfast alternatives in 2007, and banning palm oil from their kitchens. Now pork products will be removed from the breakfast menu altogether, as the chain embraces a “new breakfast concept”. Although it is not clear what precisely will now replace bacon and sausages, it is understood to be a “healthy, plant-based” alternative.
No other meats have yet been affected, although the selection of cereals and cheese offered will also be reduced to help fight climate change, reports TheLocal.se.
Behind the move is the wife of chain owner Petter Stordalen. Gunhild Stordalen, the CEO of the entirely innocent sounding GreeNudge foundation has helped formulate the new breakfast. Sounding remarkably like a United Nations body itself, GreeNudge describes itself as working for “a quicker transition to a sustainable society”.
Cached in the friendly language of modern corporatism, GreeNudge helpfully explains: “A nudge means a friendly, little push in green direction. GreeNudge is an organisation with the goal to initiate, fund and promote research into behavioural change as a climate measure”.
Taking away the traditional Scandinavian hotel breakfast of crispy pan-fried bacon, chipolata sausages, and scrambled eggs from the customers of Nordic Choice may be seen as a great achievement for the foundation, and in line with their mission statement.
One Nordic Choice employee has reported some customers to be “upset” by the change, but a manager for the chain explained the move was all about ending traditional breakfast. He said: “We want to challenge and break down many of the traditional conventions around hotels”.
Pork products are under increasing pressure accross Europe. Many fast food outlets no longer sell bacon to cater for Halal tastes, and as reported by Breitbart London last month pork foods may be banned in workplace kitchens and eateries out of “good etiquette” towards Muslims.
The new guidelines by the CoExist House interfaith group could also spell the end for the boozy Christmas office party, as it advises serving alcohol at corporate events can hurt the feelings of members of particular faiths.