The Danish Whole Grain Partnership continues to carry out inspiring campaigns and promotions, as we’ve reported in previous blogs.

Most recently, last June, we highlighted the impressive gains in Danes’ whole grain consumption brought about in large part by the Danish Whole Grain Partnership’s work; and two years ago, we reported on the country’s first National Whole Grain Day, modeled after Whole Grain Sampling Day in the U.S.

Now campaign leader Rikke Iben Neess is back again, with another guest blog describing her organization’s latest National Whole Grain Day. That’s Rikke (on the left) and her friend Gitte from Project Homeless (right), with their Whole Grain Hero mascot.

Inspired by your Whole Grain Sampling day, the Danish Whole Grain Partnership celebrated the 3rd National Whole Grain Day in Denmark on October 24th 2014. This year we had two activities:

1. Whole Grain Fridays at the office

In Denmark there is tradition for employees to take turns to bring breakfast to work enjoying it with colleagues on Friday mornings. Often people bring the delicious Danish pastry to the Friday breakfast. We wanted to use this year’s National Whole Grain day to establish a new trend where each Friday begins with whole grain breakfast. We call it “Whole Grain Fridays” (in Danish FredagsFuldkorn).

Only 27% of the Danish people know that [soft sandwich bread] bread can actually be whole grain and we want to puncture that myth. We still eat too little whole grain in Denmark, even though the Danes eat a lot of whole grain (63 grams per day – recommended intake is 75 grams per day). But we know that the Danes who eat the very least whole grain only eat 23 grams per day. By getting whole grain to be part of the traditional breakfast at work, hopefully we have a new option to increase whole grain intake in Denmark.

2. Sampling event and introduction of the whole grain hero

We also wanted to tell Danes that whole grain tastes surprisingly good. That is why we launched our whole grain hero mascot — as a surprise for those passing by the Grand Central Station in Copenhagen where this year’s sampling event was held. 100,000 people pass through the Grand Central Station each day.

This year we did a combined promotional and sampling event. We presented whole grain products and showed the diversity with 4 different tables: Whole grains for breakfast (shown below), lunch, dinner and in between. We used the tables to get in touch with people and talk about what they eat and their knowledge about whole grains.

We also handed out recipe books for free, balloons for the children and flyers with a competition to win free whole grain breakfast each Friday for a month for you and 20 of your colleagues/friends or family. We handed out 6,000 whole grain products for free in the afternoon.

The event was a very positive experience. A lot of children wanted to be photographed with the Whole Grain Hero. Both business partners, representatives from the health NGO’s and the government the Danish Food Administration – all partners in the Danish Whole Grain Partnership – and our wonderful whole grain volunteers and the whole grain secretariat participated in the day. The retailers had a lot of good whole grain offers at the stores and some of the partners had also arranged whole grain breakfast for their employees – in one company they had arranged a whole grain breakfast with morning jazz.

At the end of the day Project Homeless came by and got whole grain products for the homeless people in Copenhagen.

Big thanks to all the partners, volunteers and not the least to the best colleagues in the secretariat. (Rikke Iben Neess)