Since 1901, the Nobel Prize Award ceremony has always been followed by a very lavish banquet at the Stockholm City Hall, advertised as the “feast of feasts”. In attendance are the Nobel laureates, the Swedish royal house, the leaders of most major political parties, and other dignitaries connected to the scientific community in different ways, in total some 1250 people. The entire event is broadcast live by Swedish television and draws a significant audience. During this show, the work of the laureates is introduced, often with the help of pre-recorded interviews, and performances specifically designed for the event are interspersed with discussions on the elaborate dresses worn by the guests. The dinner is opened with a toast to the King of Sweden and this toast is immediately followed by the King toasting Alfred Nobel. This done, the dinner proceeds with the first item of the three-course meal that is the star of the banquet.
To anyone involved in climate research, and to those involved in radical and activist initiatives in particular, there is much about the prize and its rituals that make you uncomfortable. The entire event is made possible thanks to the fortune Alfred Nobel made from his invention of dynamite, a product that revolutionized and intensified both extractive mining of the Earth’s crust and warfare. Also, the Nobel Prize in Economy has been awarded to economists such as Milton Friedman, who was instrumental in creating the neoliberal economic system that is accelerating climate change. Indeed, at a time of building planetary-scale, socio-ecological breakdown, the entire feast with its opulent, bourgeoise rituals seems somewhat bizarre.
This noted, it was heartening to see a decisive shift in what type of food was served, and in the thinking that lay behind this food. In the past, the Nobel Prize banquet has often been heavy on meat and rare exotic ingredients: turtle soup, foie de gras, and coeur de filet. The object has typically been to awe international guests and there has been marginal concern for the impact that the food served has had on people and the environment. This has begun to change and the chef for this year’s event, Jessie Sommarström, took another giant step toward a less ecologically erosive menu by serving a vegetarian first course and a main that included a chicken quenelle made with legumes to reduce the amount of meat, baked celeriac, a cabbage bouquet and, most interestingly, a kind of creamed barley gruel with wild and cultivated mushrooms. The entire menu can be found here.
Not everyone was happy. In the daily Expressen, Anna Gullberg called the meal an exercise in Swedish wokeness. For those more aware than Gullberg of the tremendous impact food has on the climate, the menu was a demonstration that turning to a sustainable diet need not be a culinary sacrifice. Sommarström’s menu will certainly not save the planet by itself, but it makes possible a different type of thinking about food and its connection to particularly festive moments. As arguably the most sustainable dinner ever served at the event, it deserves a Nobel Prize of its own.