The daily Helsingin Sanomat starts the day with the results from its latest poll assessing political support, which was carried out between 18 February and 15 March. This means the pollster Kantar TNS was still calling up homes and asking about their voting preferences one week after the unexpected 8 March government resignation.
Results show the Social Democrats (SDP) increasing their lead to 21 percent, and pulling out even farther from the number two ranked centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP) that posted a showing of 18.1 percent.
Caretaker government Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Centre Party held steady despite his surprise 8 March decision, dropping to 14.3 from February's 14.7 percent support in what has been a slow but steady downhill ride.
The fourth-most popular party in the HS poll was the Greens with 14 percent, right behind the Centre Party. Support fell slightly for the next on the list, the Finns Party, to 11.1 percent, and increased slightly for the Left Alliance at 8.9.
Election researcher Sami Borg tells the paper that if one party manages to secure over 20 percent of the popular vote, it will make government formation talks much easier. He predicts the SDP will achieve this on election night, as its polling numbers have been consistently strong.
The margin of error for the HS poll is two percentage points in either direction. The general election to elect a new Parliament in Finland will take place on 14 April.
Meat consumption still strong, sugar and butter no
The Rovaniemi-based newspaper Lapin Kansa reports on the Finnish population's diet, with a story examining what typical dinner plates have looked like in the past.
Favourites from the 1920s and 30s were pea, meat, and fish soups, along with various porridges and the famous "läskisoosi", a kind of pork stew. In the 40s and 50s, a typical meal was potatoes with various sauces or salted fish. By the 1960s and 70s, the standard of living had improved to the point that meat became the centrepiece of the meal. Sausages and roasts in particular were hot sellers.
Natural Resources Institute senior scientist Juha-Matti Katajajuuri says that Finns only started to be able to afford meat in the early 1960s, but then consumption "grew recklessly" for the next 50 years. Still in the 1970s, the sale of poultry products in Finland was virtually non-existent, "but now poultry already accounts for a third of total meat consumption, and its share keeps on growing."
Nutrition historian Merja Sillanpää tells LK that Finns ate much more sugar and fat in the 1960s and 70s than they do now: consuming 30 kilos of sugar and over 22 kilos of butter per person. The current per capita average consumption of potatoes, about 40 kilos a year, has dropped dramatically since the 1950s, when the average Finn was downing a sizeable 140 kilos of the tubers a year. Milk consumption has also fallen off in favour of cheese and yoghurt products.
Day and night are equal
And the tabloid Iltalehti shares the good news that today marks the vernal equinox. Technically, this is when the subsolar point crosses the celestial equator into the northern half of the planet, an event which is taken to mean the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Like all equinoxes, 20 March will see an almost exactly equal amount of daylight and night across most of the Earth's latitudes. IL asks Anja Häkkinen from the Finnish Meteorological Institute if this means we can say goodbye to winter in Finland.
"Temperatures are already above zero in many areas, but the weather will remain quite variable in many places," she says.