Food Challenge 2020

New Flavours, Shared Joy and Sustainable Everyday Routines – Take Part in the Food Challenge!

Food Challenge 2020 encourages you to try different food habits and activities! Be inspired by new ingredients, recipes and routines. Contemplate your food choices and your relationship to food. Experience the joy of food with your family and friends. Food Challenge 2020 is all this and whatever you want it to be!

Food Challenge 2020 consists of 50 challenges that approach food from different perspectives. The aim is to complete these challenges during the year 2020. The challenges are varied and easy to do. You can complete the challenges in your own way and choose to focus on the challenges that you find the most interesting and the most useful for you.

Share the joy of food by posting on the progress of your food challenge on social media! People who have posted on social media will participate in monthly raffles which have food related prizes!

The food challenge is organised jointly by the Hotel and Restaurant Museum and the Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka’s Food Museum. The Hotel and Restaurant Museum is specialised in the history of hotels, restaurants, cafés, tourism and Finnish culinary culture. Sarka is a national museum of agriculture whose new Food Museum theme explores the interplay between food and food production.

Food Challenge 2020 has been inspired by the Reading Challenge organised by the Helmet-libraries and the Museum Challenge organised by the Museum Card.

How to take part?

1. Open to everyone

The Food Challenge is aimed at everyone irrespective of, for example, place of residence, age, gender or life situation. You do not have to have previous experience or knowledge of cooking or, for example, food trends.

2. Customise your food challenge

You can customise the food challenge to suit your level of previous skills and knowledge and, more importantly, your interests. The challenges do not need to be completed in the order they are listed and you do not have to complete all the challenges in order to participate.

You may opt to do one challenge a week (there are enough challenges for almost all of the weeks of the year) or complete several challenges at the same time. You can start and finish the challenge when it suits you. If one of the challenges is already a part of your food routines, you just modify the challenge to suit you better.

3. Share your experience

Food tastes better when shared! Some of the challenges are about eating together with family or friends but almost all the challenges can be done together with someone.

Share your Food Challenge experience on social media using the hashtag #ruokahaaste2020. Join the Food Challenge Facebook Group where participants can share tips and experiences.

The Hotel and Restaurant Museum and the Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka organise a raffle once a month for those who have posted a public post about the Food Challenge on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and used the hashtags #ruokahaaste2020, #hotellijaravintolamuseo and #sarkamuseo.

The rules of the raffle can be found here.

4. Need help?

Food Challenge 2020’s open Facebook Group is a place to ask for advice and to share your own tips regarding the challenges. There will be weekly tips from the organizing museums on how to complete that week’s challenge shared both in the Facebook Group and the museums’ social media channels:

Food Challenge 2020 Facebook Group
Hotel and Restaurant Museum’s Facebook and Instagram
Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

The Food Challenges

1. Invite a friend, neighbour or relative over for coffee or dinner. Challenge them to participate in the food challenge.
2. Finnish Society for Food Education Ruukku’s challenge: What does a “treat” mean for you? This challenge makes you think about what is a “treat” and whether or not you should stop eating treats in January.
3. Do an inventory of the contents of your food cupboards and fridge.
4. Try a vegetable or a fruit you have never eaten before.
5. Think about a food or a treat that you really liked when you were a child and make it.
6. Martha Organization’s challenge: Organise a climate friendly dinner.
7. Plan the whole week’s meals in advance and go food shopping based on the plan.
8. Ask for cooking tips or product recommendations from a shopkeeper or salesperson.
9. Make a food or a drink yourself which you usually only buy ready-made or eat in a restaurant.
10. ELO Foundation’s challenge: Do you eat lunch at a school or workplace cafeteria? Say “Thank you!” to the professional who makes your everyday life easier and tastier.
11. Set the table especially nicely on a weeknight.
12. Try a drink you have never tried before.
13. Bake.
14. Familiarize yourself with the history of the food that is served during a particular holiday or occasion.
15. Cook or bake using leftovers from previous meals.
16. Do an online test related to food.
17. Grow food yourself (in a way that is possible for you): for example, a herb on the windowsill, a pot on a balcony, a vegetable patch or a berry bush.
18. Meira’s challenge: Try a spice you have never tried before.
19. Taste a food or ingredient which you do not like but which you have not tried again for a long time.
20. Explore a new food culture and cook a meal related to it.
21. Try a new source of protein: one of the new vegetarian forms of protein or a product made from insects.
22. Eat a meal outdoors, for example, in your yard, in a park, on a balcony, in a forest nearby or on the beach.
23. Is there a food or nutrient which you know you eat too little of? Find out 3–5 ways and/or recipes which help you to increase the consumption of this food/nutrient.
24. Find out which ingredients are in season. Use vegetables and fruit which are in season.
25. Combine foods that you would not normally eat together.
26. Prepare a meal from ingredients that you already have at home.
27. Buy local food from a market, a market hall, a shop or directly from a producer.
28. Eat in a place where you normally would not eat.
29. Plan a meal around a colour of your choosing.
30. Try a new way of preserving food.
31. Eat alone and concentrate on all the tastes and aromas of the food.
32. Do you have a kitchen appliance or a tool in your cupboard that you never use? Get it out of the cupboard and use it at least once.
33. Pick or catch your own food: go hunting, fishing or picking berries, mushrooms or wild herbs and vegetables, and cook something from your catch.
34. Eat at least two different types of Finnish fish during one week.
35. Ruokatieto’s challenge: Find out about the origin of the ingredients and the country of production of one the food products you use often.
36. Think about 1 to 3 things you can do to reduce your food waste.
37. Find out a traditional dish of your area or place of residence and make it.
38. Take part in the Hunger Day collection.
39. Finnish Environment Institute’s challenge: Share your favourite vegetarian or fish recipe.
40. Try a cooking method you never or very seldom use.
41. Read or watch a book/movie/tv series etc. which focuses on food or has a food related word in the title.
42. Drink a drink which begins with the same letter as your name.
43. Be a vegan for a day.
44. Contemplate your relationship to food by, for example, making a collage from magazine cuttings or by writing your personal food history.
45. Look through cookbooks (for example in the library) and try a new recipe you find.
46. Come up with your own food challenge and share it with others participating in the challenge.
47. Cook together with a friend.
48. Think about one of your own food memories or ask your parents, grandparents, children or friends about their food memories.
49. Familiarize yourself with the official nutrition recommendation from 2014. Evaluate how well your own diet corresponds with the recommendations.
50. Exchange go-to recipes with a friend, a colleague or a family member.