The origin of the name GRØN and Nordic gastronomy

September 08, 2019

COLUMN

GRØN was launched in 2018 as a protein food made using the power of plants!

GRØN is the Danish word for GREEN, but GRØN itself is a brand that was born in Japan and is made in Japan.

The reason for the Danish name was our encounter with Nordic Gastronomy.

Nordic gastronomy is a Nordic style of cuisine that reexamines ingredients and promotes local production and consumption.
The basis of this approach is a simpler approach: to reexamine natural ingredients and think about food from both a cultural and economic perspective together with producers.

This idea is also common to much of the Japanese cuisine that we Japanese are familiar with.

We decided on a word that means GREEN in Danish because we wanted to create a brand that can be passed on to the next generation, based on a simple approach to "being sustainable for the environment and society" and "supporting healthy and prosperous lives for consumers and producers".

The ingredients chosen are nutritious wild plants and agricultural products that have long been used as medicines in various parts of Japan.

While searching for a way to utilize all the nutritional value from the roots to the leaves, we came across the material known as powder.

It can be handled equally whether the shape is good or bad, and can be stored for a long time.
We felt that this format, which allows producers to cultivate in a planned manner, would be the future of agriculture.

I was also thrilled to learn that these nutritious wild plants and herbs are found not only in Japan but all over the world, and that they have supported people's lives throughout history.

We have focused on these things, grouping together ingredients that should be passed on to future generations across borders as superfoods, and have made it our brand's mission to pass on these ingredients to the next generation.

The two keywords the brand chose to describe its mission are "sustainable" and "wellness."

On the sustainable side,
・To connect the passion of producers and support their lives. ・To increase the value of superfoods (plant-based ingredients rich in the blessings of nature) that exist in Japan and around the world. ・To find ways to use these ingredients in a way that suits modern society and pass them on to the next generation.

As a wellness aspect, we aim to create products that provide a wide range of nutrients efficiently. We aim to create products that provide protein, an important nutrient that modern people tend to lack. We aim to create products that are easy to consume and delicious for everyone to enjoy, in line with modern lifestyles.