Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

HEALTH

Aarhus to offer vegan food at elderly care homes, daycares

A majority of members on the city council in Aarhus support a motion to make vegan food an option at all institutions under municipality auspices.

Published: 10 December 2018 19:49 CET
Aarhus to offer vegan food at elderly care homes, daycares
File photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

The city council leadership will vote on the proposal on Wednesday this week, media including Politiken and TV2 Østjylland report.

The three left wing parties backing the proposal – the Social Liberals, Alternative, and the Red Green Alliance – have a majority with 16 of 31 members on the council, meaning the vegan option is likely to become reality.

Aarhus City Councillor Liv Gro Jensen of the Alternative party said that the measure was an important step in the city reaching of its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

“Meat plays a major role in climate considerations so we naturally want to make a statement as a municipality by offering our residents plant-based food,” Jensen told Politiken.

All municipality-run institutions, including elderly care homes and daycares for pre-school children, will offer plant-based meals, while meat and dairy products will also still be on the menu.

“This is first and foremost about giving residents a choice that can assist our municipal agenda,” Social Liberal councillor Eva Borchhorst Mejnertz told Politiken, adding that she didn’t think the proposal would “do very much harm”.

But adding vegan food to menus at places like elderly care homes will not be of benefit unless there is demand for it, Danish People’s Party (DF) councillor Jette Skive, an advisor on the health and social care board, said.

“At care homes, residents pay for their own food, and they will have the food they want. If there is demand for plant-based food, then efforts should be made to meet that demand, but at the moment that’s not the case at our care homes,”Skive told Politiken.

Skive also said that she would not support plant-based foods at daycares until there was scientific unanimity over whether it was healthy for children have an exclusively plant-based diet.

“Until science is in agreement, I think we should rein things in and wait before making changes like this,” she said.

READ ALSO: Denmark presents plan to get kids eating healthier food

For members

HEALTH

What is Denmark doing to tackle stress in the workplace?

Denmark is renowned for its work-life balance but the number of people who get sick from stress has risen over the last ten years. We spoke to a Professor of Psychology about what's being done in Denmark to avoid stress in the workplace.

Published: 13 September 2024 18:23 CEST
What is Denmark doing to tackle stress in the workplace?

Stress at work is something that is openly discussed in Denmark. High profile politicians such as Alex Vanopslagh, Jacob Mark and former Deputy Prime Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen have honestly conveyed their own experiences, paving the way for it be an accepted discussion in the workplace.

“I think in Denmark there’s a general acceptance you can get sick due to stress and work-related stress.
Most Danes know somebody who has been sick due to stress and we know it’s very serious,” Yun Ladegaard, External Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen told The Local.
 
Figures from the National Health Profile 2023 (Den Nationale Sundhedsprofil) reported by national broadcaster DR, show that the proportion of Danes with a ‘high score on the stress scale’ increased from 21.3 per cent in 2013 to 31.5 per cent in 2023.
 
 
Ladegaard, who is also Development Director at Necto, an organisation that helps companies with employee mental health, explained that the rise in stress is also due to awareness about the condition. 
 
“A lot of these figures are self-reported so the discourse has increased. People know what stress is and can identify what it is. People tend to check for stress more whereas before, it was more of a taboo. So that’s why figures are higher,” Ladegaard explained.
 
“But also I think there’s an understanding that we have a stressed society, with more pressure on the youth with grades and areas to perform and also pressure online.
 
 
“In the public sector, there has been a lot of reorganisation to make things more effective but this means we have taken off all the slack, which leads to more pressure.
 
“It has meant an increase in ‘moral distress’, where you can’t do everything you need to, to provide the best service, so you get stressed. For example a teacher in charge of 28 students without any extra support to do other jobs, could feel ‘moral distress.’ It is normal to talk about this now and people can recognise the feeling in their body,” Ladegaard told The Local.
 

Yun Ladegaard, External Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen
 
When the body experiences stress, the parasympathetic nervous system is inhibited, not allowing the body to slow down and relax. When there is no opportunity for this to happen during a work day, it can cause symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, which can then affect productivity.
 
Stress is treated the same as any physical illness in Denmark. So if you are unwell and unable to work, Danish employment law allows you to take sick leave.
 
Your employer and/or relevant local municipality are responsible for sick pay and this covers tax-payers and residents of Denmark who are employed, self-employed and unemployed receiving benefits.
 
 
“Stress is treated like a sickness but it is advisable to go to your leader or manager before you get so intensely sick with stress, that you need to go on sick leave.
 
“So it’s a matter of dialogue with what is causing you stress so you can be supported, whether that is helping you prioritise tasks, or if you have a sick child at home, needing you to reduce working hours. It is handled differently in different sectors and there isn’t legislation – but there is legislation that says it should be safe and healthy to go to work,” Ladegaard emphasised.
 
 
A study by the National Research Centre for Working Environment (Det Nationale Forskningscenter for Arbejdsmiljø) recently showed that stress sickness claims cost workplaces 16.4 billion kroner each year.
 
But rather than focusing on the treatment of the individual, Yun Ladegaard believes employers could do more to prevent stress in employees.
 
“We know a lot about how to treat someone and get you back to work in a safe way but the problem is sometimes trying to change the working conditions. There’s a reason people get sick and if leaders have the resources to change this, they would have done this before their employees got sick.
 
Therefore does the working environment and organisation of work have a high enough priority in the workplace, compared to finance or other areas of the business? It should be as high a priority but it’s not always the case,” Ladegaard said.
 
 
“There are many things we can do in workplaces to try and reduce stress. One is sustainability –  how to organise work so it’s sustainable, so if you have a bad day, can you still perform? If you hit a time of needing to look after sick parents, can you still perform at your job? Nobody can perform at 100 percent all the time.
 
“Also, having more breaks and a respect that you can’t take meetings back-to-back and be productive. The brain needs diversity of tasks and a break. Now we have AI, we haven taken some of the slow tasks away but if we only have ‘confrontational’ tasks, then it’s an increased pressure on the brain and an increased risk of stress,” Ladegaard told The Local.
 
To try and improve stress at work, some private and public sectors have started offering four-day weeks with reduced hours overall, including some divisions of Copenhagen municipality.
 
“If you come from another country, you might think ‘why do you think it’s a lot to work 37 hours a week?’ but everything is relative,” Ladegaard said.
 
“We have quite good collective agreements in Denmark but we still have conflicts at work, high demands, sexism, even bullying and we want to do the best we can.
 
“There can be different stressors in your lives, not just work and many people have different combinations that lead to stress, if you can’t live up to what you feel you should live up to.” 
 
 
SHOW COMMENTS