Do swedes not share food with their guests?

There’s been quite the confusion on social media regarding the Swedish alleged custom of not sharing food with guests. Is it really that bad in Sweden?

As child in Sweden, I was always asked by host if I wanted to eat with them but normally didn’t since dinner was waiting at home, same if I had friends over.

This only appllied to dinner, however. Lunch, fika, snacks and everything else is shared.

It’s hardly as extreme as some try to make it out. Yes, dinner is normally shared with family, at home, at a specific time, every day. If my kids want to eat a friends house, they normally call home and ask first, in which case we don’t mind as long as it’s not special occasion.

I imagine this has some to do with the typ of foods we prepare and eat here in the north compared with more southern folks. We haven’t had access to a lot of simple to prepare foods, but have had to make do with stuff that takes time to prepare and is not generally tasty uncooked.

That makes it harder to accomodate for more people than prepared for and both the host and the hosted parties know this.

I’ve also seen some food lists for yearly meal planning for families and you realise that people really did count the calories after harvest and then ate according to this carefully laid out plan for the rest of the year since there normally wasn’t much else food to come by. If you’ve counted your potatoes in the fall and over eat in January, you’re going to have a bad time in March.

It’s also out of respect to the mother who’ve cooked dinner for you, which is what I used to hear when I accidentally ate before dinner at home!

As a final note, sharing food, dinner specifically, is an extremely important part of our culture, probably precisely because of the above.

Though, dinner is often shared after an invite, otherwise easier types of food is shared.

Below is an example of subversive article with clickbait headline trying to make us and our culture look bad.

2024-03-30 10:15