Assistant Darja Kolar and prof. dr. Samo Kreft received the award »Prometheus of Science for Excellence in Science Communication«

Prometheus of Science for Excellence in Science Communication was awarded to assistant Darja Kolar and prof. dr. Samo Kreft on 28th of January at the ceremonial academy of the Slovenian Science Foundation, held at the premises of the National Parlament. The participants of the traditional ceremony were first addressed by the President of the National Council Alojz Kovšca and the Rector of the University of Ljubljana, co-founder of the Slovenian Science Foundation. Our colegues received the award for their project Hungry Pumpkin (Lačna Bučka). As stated in the justification, they use "an innovative approach to communicate about food of plant origin". Darja Kolar and Samo Kreft are co-authors of the popular science portal / blog »Lačna Bučka (www.lacna-bucka.com) and its English version Hungry Pumpkin (www.hungry-pumpkin.com). The articles they publish on this site address, in a popular scientific way, foods of plant origin, especially their nutritional value, as well as historical, cultural, botanical and other aspects related to plant foods.
In the last 7 months, since the portal was established, they have published 43 articles.

About half of the articles are woven around a nutritionally complete, plant-based meal recipe that involves presentations of foods. For each meal, the content of each of the individual nutrients is calculated and a comment is made on which foods contributed the most to e.g. proteins, magnesium,… The remaining contributions are devoted to a single food or food group (eg rice, garlic, cereals) or to a particular nutrient (eg sodium chloride, fiber, protein,…)

The Lačna Bučka and Hungry Pumpkin portals are an important source of scientifically verified information, especially for the general public, and their contributions are also read by experts. It is intended for all those interested in popular science, healthy nutrition and cuisine, and especially for vegans who, despite limiting their dietary choices to plant sources, live healthy and provide their body with all the nutrients they need. If vegans may be the main target audience, they are by no means the only ones. Contributions are also suitable for omnivores who like to eat vegetables with meat, since the contributions are written scientifically and without moralizing.

The papers are written at a high professional level, but in a language that is sufficiently simple to be understood by such a wide range of readers. The authors are biologists and pharmacists by training, enabling them to master the substance from two perspectives.
The quality of their work is also evidenced by the excellent readership response. Despite the fact that there are several other popular science pages with similar topics in English, Darja Kolar and Samo Kreft have managed to gain over 6000 regular followers of their English portal on Facebook in a relatively short time (https://www.facebook.com/Hungry -Pumpkin-857408511287446 /) and the same number also on the Slovenian portal. Their most notable post on calcium in foods reached over 57,000 readers in just a few months, with readers sharing it 456 times among their friends and liking it 2352 times.