14 ms·

The Norwegian art of the packed lunch

133 points by bauta-steen 8y ago

tomcam 8y ago
I have found a similar approach extremely effective for productivity. I have to admit, however, that when I worked at places like Microsoft and QSC I enjoyed lunches with my colleagues immensely because they were all so damn smart and interesting. However... > Another hallmark of the matpakke is the addition of small, bread-sized squares of mellomleggspapir – between-layer paper – between each slice of bread; these can be peeled off as you eat your way through the layers. Could one of you Vikings give me a better explanation of this practice?
- therein 8y ago
  That paragraph makes it sound exotic but I believe it is simply the equivalent of parchment paper we have between slices of presliced cheese.
  - adamcik 8y ago
    Correct, it's basically pre-cut parchment paper. The thing to watch out for though is that the parchment paper is not suited for baking (mainly thinner and cheaper), we once baked a pizza on the matpakke type and it was a pain to get the paper off the crust.
- kasperni 8y ago
  Yes, basically it is avoid the toppings on each bread sticking to the next bread. This is how a rye bread "sandwich" typically looks in Denmark: https://www.madling.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Hjemmelavet-sm%C3%B8rrebr%C3%B8d-opskrift.jpg https://www.madling.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Hjemmelave...
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Sandwiches in Scandinavia default to open-faced. Unlike the US, there's no second piece of bread on top, so you need something to stop them from getting smashed together.
  - tomcam 8y ago
    Thank you, that was the key to my puzzlement. The article implied, to me anyway, that a single sandwich might have three or four layers. Now I see that it is actually multiple open-face sandwiches, which is awesome to me.
- unixhero 8y ago
  Very simple. It is dividers, usually made of a strong paper material, but plastic or aluminium foil works too. It must be stronger than cellophane, that won't work. Just think about it, if you make a nice slice of bread with strawberry jam, without mellomleggspapir and it would hit right into the slice above and mix with the ham and cheese.
Aeolun 8y ago
We have a more or less similar practice in the Netherlands and Japan (bringing a homemade lunch, not necessarily bland), but I find that I really enjoy going out and trying different places to lunch. I guess I could save a ton of money if I didn’t, but it’s worth it to me. Lunch is indeed something I look forward to.
- Tharkun 8y ago
  I feel the same. Sadly it's quite hard to find a healthy lunch near my office, and this is why I'm overweight.
  - throes_death 8y ago
    Your inability to find healthy lunch near your office isn't why you are overweight.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      Well, given the fact that they lunch out regardless, the proximate cause is likely that all the food around is covered in fat.
    - Tharkun 8y ago
      Of course not, I wasn't being entirely serious, but it's certainly a contributing factor. I enjoy the social aspect of going out for lunch (and the flavour aspect, of course). It's difficult to eat out and eat something healthy, even salads are soaked in high-calory dressings. Perhaps this Norwegian "art" of eating a bland lunch that "should be a disappointment" is someone's twisted idea of a good time. But it's not mine.
      - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
        To be fair: I'm American and live in Norway and have for a bit over 5 years now. I have found lunches to be a bit different. While you can sit by yourself and read, you can also be part of a group really easily. In language and civics classes, we were encouraged to sit down and talk to others at lunches and breaks - especially if we were working somewhere with a common lunch time. I don't find social pressure to bring what everyone else brings and others are usually a bit jealous when someone brings in something yummy. In context, the lunches are about like a peanut butter or baloney sandwich or something. Not really... bland, per se, but non-offensive. You can also pass some of the options off as healthy, which helps. In any case, you still get some of those social aspects even if you don't get the change of scenery that usually goes along with them.
wodenokoto 8y ago
> “That’s the Norwegian way and it’s most peculiar, because it’s not the same in Sweden or Denmark, Iceland or Finland. It’s a very Norwegian tradition” Bullshit. Madpakke, consisting of open sandwiches on rye is still very common in Denmark, and was the bane of my childhood school years, though thankfully most office places has moved on to provide workers with a decent cantina, and more and more school children are handed money to buy their lunch. As the article states in the beginning, these stale packed lunches are not much to look forward too.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  It’s definitely not the same in Sweden; the husmanskost lunch is a nightmare for office workers having been designed to give you a big load of calories (mostly in the form of melted butter) in the middle of the day to keep you ploughing / sawing / mining all afternoon. It’s pretty difficult to find a sandwich or light lunch here as most of the dagens menus assume hot food and a side dish of salad and a slice of bread (plus obligatory coffee).
  - henrikschroder 8y ago
    Back when I was working in Stockholm, we usually went to a certain place on Fridays to grab a greasy lunch and a pint of beer, and when everyone came back to the office, absolutely no work got done, it was glorious! :-D
- henrikschroder 8y ago
  I never saw anyone bring lunch to work when I worked in Copenhagen over a decade ago, but the at work cantinas were a lot more common than they were in Sweden. Whereas in Sweden, the work cantinas were phased out in the 80's and the norm if you have an office job is that everyone leaves the office for lunch, and you go to a lunch restaurant, sit down, and eat your lunch. I really tried finding something similar to Swedish lunch restaurants in Copenhagen, but I could never find any. There's only "real" restaurants, which are too slow and upscale and expensive for lunch every day, or they're too fast-food-y or only really do take-away, that you're supposed to take back to the office and sit there and eat. Drove me nuts. I have a bunch of Swedish friends who all came back from work trips to Norway, cursing, because the &¤#&#"&"# Norwegians would schedule meetings over lunch, and then everyone else would just pull up their /¤#&"&!"#&#" matpakke in the middle of the meeting, while my friends were stuck with nothing to eat, because they were used to taking a break, going out, sitting down, eating lunch, and then going back to the office. Instead, they had to sit and starve in meetings.
xte 8y ago
Hem, I't common in any country of the world, perhaps with different names, different food, different packing but the same principles. In Italy is called "schiscetta" (read in English Skishetta), in Japan is called "bento" etc... In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. Have seen the different idea of productivity in few countries and their relevant economic level I think there is no real correlation...
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. This is fascinating and very interesting from a radical point of view. A while ago there was a thread on HN about if it would be bad for a workplace to have bunks and a kitchen such that employees can sleep there. To me the whole idea felt incredibly dystopian. In the end, though, some authors have observed a kind of cultural shift, in which we are no longer told what to do at work, but rather the workplace tries to align our desire to theirs, the analogy Frédéric Lordon[0] uses is that desires can be expressed as vectors, and the modern workplace, lacking the old methods to make us work (because they are culturally inappropriate, or illegal) must use such a method which seems a whole lot less pernicious at face value. It's not only the time to make the lunch which counts as unpaid labour, it's also the time and expense to travel to work (and according to some stories on HN this can get to absurd levels) and due to the phenomena I mentioned a lot of time spent around work doing non-work activities (though this is more common if there is a "workplace culture"). [0] "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire"
  - xte 8y ago
    Take it with veeery long fireplace tongs but IMO any living being, not only human try to have the most he/she want at the least "cost" so we humans during our evolution we do various kind of effort with various kind of success to have more working less. Nowadays we struggle a lot less to accomplish many tasks we need, for instance we can cut wood with machines so quickly and with very little fatigue, we can dig ground with an excavator in minutes instead of hours and hours of manual work with shovel and pickaxe etc. Naturally for us it's still "fatigue" so we want do automate more, work less. That's natural nor positive nor negative (we may say that avoid struggling and have much free time is positive and counterarguments that we discover obesity, diabetes and many other disease due to that) but trying to bend it to have people work is a subtle form of slavery. For instance Google classic "game-fill workplace" to me is more a way to "capture" workforce than a nice way of work... Of course I'd like to work in my favorite field so work seems more pleasure than work but with some limits: work is work, play is play. Even if they seems to blend work have expiring dates, require a certain kind of attention and do not require other kind of attention. Play have normally no expiring dates, no guarantees etc. Long story short my own personal "best compromise" way is being responsible adults that try to play together for our own sake. The modern idea of reject individual responsibilities and so being directed like sheep in the flock happily ignorant is not really different than ancient slavery and it certainly not a thing I like.
funtastique 8y ago
Oh boy, I would call it an "art of 'meaningless journalism'". There are a numerous reasons, for the bland "bag lunch" (literally "the food pack" (matpakke)) - where do i start? - the sandwich price in the shop is 4-8 quid, make the math, cook at home - sky high prices in the cafes, etc - weak selection of meats /cheeses in local shops (agricultural-protectionism/limited EU import) - high prices on meats /cheeses in local shops + 4x of the EU average (agricultural-protectionism/limited EU import) - the poor past + jante thing - the stubbornness of general local population - "(grand)parents always did it like that" - strong creeping low-profile nationalism - "norwegian way", "buy norwegian", "eat norwegian, etc" - everybody is making "foodpack" why should i stick out - 30 mins - not enough time for anything(cafe, etc) - sparse cafes and cantinas etc. - most cantinas serve just this specific company or this specific office building. More often than not, you are not expected to go into the other company's cantina. - some work places are way too far from any cafe, etc.(say you are a tree logger) - automatic thing, don't have to think much - going out (work, hiking, skiing, whatever) - take a foodpack. You dont know when/where you next meal will be "thinking" as most of Norway is non-urban. Army rations taste probably like 10x better than the typical bland norwegian foodpack. But you can continue to gourge on the "Norwegian" propaganda on bbc and elsewhere. p.s. Downvote all you want, reality hurts, huh?
- tallanvor 8y ago
  A lot of the reasons you specify are pretty much true, it's the way you word it (and posting more than once when not responding to anyone) that is hurting your comment the most.
mort96 8y ago
I'm a Norwegian. This mostly isn't wrong, a lot of us do use "matpakke"s, but I object to this quote: “In Norway, you’re not supposed to look forward to your lunch,” says Ronald Sagatun, who works in advertising and hosts a YouTube channel about Norwegian culture. “It’s kind of a strict thing. It’s easy to make, easy to carry around, easy to eat, but it should be a disappointment.” Maybe it's "kind of a strict thing" in some parts of the country, but certainly not where I am (Oslo). While everyone did eat a "matpakke" for lunch in the first 7 years of school ("barneskolen"), ever since, the places I've been has served hot lunch in a cafeteria. This includes the second level of school ("ungdomsskolen"), our version of high school ("videregående"), university, three workplaces (which is two summer jobs and the place I'm working now). It's not like it's uncommon for someone to bring a "matpakke" but saying it's "kind of a strict thing" that "you're not supposed to look forward to your lunch" is bullshit, at least in the general form presented in the article. (I'm also not sure about the pronounciation "maadpukke". Maybe it follows some internationally recognized form of phonetic writing, but if it doesn't, that "d" and "u" is really strange to me. I'd just say you pronounce it straightforward like "matpakke", with the Norwegian pronounciation of "a". Judge for yourself based on how Google Translate says it: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&tl=en&text=matpakke https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&t...)
- funtastique 8y ago
  10 year expat here. Part which I don't get is how come "warm lunches" for schools typical/natural/expected in the rest of the developed world never caught up here. Equality uber-alles?
  - mort96 8y ago
    As I wrote in my comment, warm lunch _is_ catching on, at least in my part of the country. As for why it's not as common as in some other countries (yet), there's no "equality über alles". I'd guess the reason is that Norway was until relatively recently a poor country with little good farmland, so most of our food culture comes from there.
  - roel_v 8y ago
draw_down 8y ago
Can’t understand that at all. Lunch is one of the 3 best meals of the day, don’t waste it!
funtastique 8y ago
Here goes Norwegian propaganda: "BBC noticed us and our "SPECIAL NORWEGIAN WAY" of making sandwiches, oh my!" https://www.nettavisen.no/livsstil/mads-og-ronald-lagde-video-om-matpakke-plutselig-ringte-bbc/3423576335.html https://www.nettavisen.no/livsstil/mads-og-ronald-lagde-vide... p.s.And this sort of food is definitely not healthy. p.p.s. "hot food" - It is not a big thing, until you consider the notion that sandwiches of any kind are one step away from cancer/ gastric ulcer inducing ramen packs and 'snickers' snack. Then you kinda start thinking how good are any sandwiches for you during the lunch time. Same goes for kids. This is why warm soup is anyday better than "fast-track unbalanced(no veggies) sandwich"(R) as described here/in the article. Of course 'hot food' type makes a difference - balanced potatos, salad, meat/fish combo or a soup is 100 light years away from say 'hot pockets' fake food.
imhoguy 8y ago
Related to the last photo: try to not eat anything in front of computer at work. It creates bad habit and links computer work (stressor) with eating (rewarding stimulus) which will probably lead to obesity. Always take a break.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  I lost a few kilos by eating a packed lunch at my desk instead of going out for lunch. (With a packed lunch I decide on what to eat before I'm hungry, which tends to be way more reasonable. When I'm hungry all I want is a big burger with fries! By deciding ahead of time I avoid eating that.)
elgfare 8y ago
Norwegian here. I pack a lunch like this about every other day. I enjoy eating it much more than you would think from reading this.
rcarmo 8y ago
I’m Portuguese and (even having worked in London and Amsterdam) find this line of thought profoundly alien. While it is true that there is a trend towards longer lunchtimes here, packing your lunch, eating in and not taking the time to leave the office and have lunch at different places nearby (and socialize while doing so) has a bunch of negative connotations... For me, at least, the dietary implications alone make this (and the typical British work lunch) a major put-off.
gazarullz 8y ago
I am living in Denmark working for a famous toy company. I moved from Southern Europe to Denmark a few years ago and the thing that struck me the most was the 20 minutes lunch break (since the schedule is 7.40 hours and 20 minutes of lunch break). I feel it was too rushed and my stomach had hard times adapt to those time frames.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  A tip from my blue collar days, when I also only had a 20 minute lunch: eat a decent breakfast, and pack something like an apple/granola bar that you can quickly snack on at ~2-3 pm. If i try to wolf down food that quickly I just feel ill & sluggish, but eating a smaller lunch & a mid-afternoon snack actually left me feeling better. I continue to do this, it helps avoud afternoon sluggishness. Although I would miss the rest of break time, I'd much rather work 0.5 hr later in the day and have a brief moment of respite.
  - gazarullz 8y ago
    That is what I ended up doing as-well, extending my lunch break for about 15-20 minutes. But that in retrospective puts me in the situation where I am left sitting alone in the canteen due to colleagues finishing long before me.
dekhn 8y ago
I'm from the US but visited Norway as a kid. The open face sandwich is one of my biggest memories. "But how do you store it without making a mess?" "Wax paper". "But why not just add a second piece of bread?" "We don't do that here".
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
For several months i am taking my lunch to work for that reason - lunch break takes less time (also the food in those restaurants is so expensive and worst of all doesn't taste that good) Now I know that I am following progressive Norwegian best practices!
uptime 8y ago
I find the matpakke thing to be agreeable, at least he way my Norwegian friends do it. Pack what you like! In the US anyway, lunch can be expensive and time consuming if done at restaurants. Portions can be large and that makes me sluggish. My biggest problem with it is the concept of choice - that eats up my time allotment more than the eating! And for social time I would rather talk with coffee than over mouthfuls of food.
gonzus 8y ago
I find it very hard to believe you would get "stern looks from colleagues" simply because you made yourself a different sandwich... It this for real? If I had to bring a sandwich to work, I would certainly make it with something I do enjoy eating, colleagues be damned.
- lb1lf 8y ago
  Stern looks is probably exaggerated, but I unusual sandwiches or toppings are likely to draw a comment or two. However, this is mostly in the context of being a conversation starter, though - at least in my experience. "Roast beef, huh? Celebrate something this weekend, did you?" I do think the Norwegian interviewed is exaggerating a bit for effect, though - several of his statement are not what I - being Norwegian - would consider normal or expected by your coworkers. As an irrelevant aside, the town in the illustration is Ålesund. I can see my old house in the photo!
  - funtastique 8y ago
    While true, its the never-ending sarcasm that permeates through these idiotic questions that gets me. To norwegians: Why should anybody care what I packed for lunch, mind personal business and stop looking into neighbors sandwich. While at it find better topics as conversation starter. p.s. still while at it, the sarcasm, that most norwegians call 'humor', would be much more interesting cultural feat to explore in an article or 2.
    - draw_down 8y ago
      Yes, that sounds annoying, and honestly kind of sad that they apparently feel a need to do that.
- ingenieros 8y ago
  Read up on "janteloven" or Jante law and this will give you some background as to why in nordic countries standing out by doing things differently is frowned upon.
ForrestN 8y ago
Am I missing something? This seems to be an overview of Norwegian lunch culture plus a summary of the benefits of having a routine, which the author thinks can be accomplished just by having lunch? Do they not routinely eat meals at roughly the same time where the author lives? Can confirm the art of American lunch includes sometimes bringing easy to make, cheap, boring food to work, and that most Americans eat lunch on a routine basis.
crazygringo 8y ago
Wow. Kind of nice to hear the US isn't the only place with a traditional hurried low-nutritional-value lunch, and that at least one other country has made the same kind of mistake we have. But also that comments here indicate nutritionally healthy hot lunches are now a thing in Norway, same as they're now common at least in tech worker cafeterias. May we all eventually move away from cheap processed meats and old preserved pates, to meals with fresh healthy protein and fresh healthy vegetables!
Sam_Harris 8y ago
Useless site for mobile devices.
asah 8y ago
love the sandwiches, but "Norway is a rich country with one of the world’s highest rates of GDP per capita. This is partly due to oil reserves in the North Sea, but it’s also to do with the nation’s productivity." hahahahahahaha "partly" - understatement of the year. Norway without oil is like Alaska without oil. That said, Norway has managed their endowment brilliantly and at scale, to such an amazing degree that it gives me hope for the human race.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
The horror. We get something like 29000 lunches in our lifetime, and 16000 are at work. To piss this away with boring bad sandwiches is an abomination. A good meal is one of the major pleasures of life. A whole culture that fumbles this in so fundamental a way is a tragedy.
tarjei 8y ago
I think the discussion here is missing a vital point in the article: Work when your at work, then go home. This is key to getting a better work life balance and also to make it easier for people to combine careers with kids and family.

133 points by bauta-steen 8y ago

I have found a similar approach extremely effective for productivity. I have to admit, however, that when I worked at places like Microsoft and QSC I enjoyed lunches with my colleagues immensely because they were all so damn smart and interesting. However... > Another hallmark of the matpakke is the addition of small, bread-sized squares of mellomleggspapir – between-layer paper – between each slice of bread; these can be peeled off as you eat your way through the layers. Could one of you Vikings give me a better explanation of this practice?

therein 8y ago
That paragraph makes it sound exotic but I believe it is simply the equivalent of parchment paper we have between slices of presliced cheese.
- adamcik 8y ago
  Correct, it's basically pre-cut parchment paper. The thing to watch out for though is that the parchment paper is not suited for baking (mainly thinner and cheaper), we once baked a pizza on the matpakke type and it was a pain to get the paper off the crust.
kasperni 8y ago
Yes, basically it is avoid the toppings on each bread sticking to the next bread. This is how a rye bread "sandwich" typically looks in Denmark: https://www.madling.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Hjemmelavet-sm%C3%B8rrebr%C3%B8d-opskrift.jpg https://www.madling.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Hjemmelave...
jpatokal 8y ago
Sandwiches in Scandinavia default to open-faced. Unlike the US, there's no second piece of bread on top, so you need something to stop them from getting smashed together.
- tomcam 8y ago
  Thank you, that was the key to my puzzlement. The article implied, to me anyway, that a single sandwich might have three or four layers. Now I see that it is actually multiple open-face sandwiches, which is awesome to me.
unixhero 8y ago
Very simple. It is dividers, usually made of a strong paper material, but plastic or aluminium foil works too. It must be stronger than cellophane, that won't work. Just think about it, if you make a nice slice of bread with strawberry jam, without mellomleggspapir and it would hit right into the slice above and mix with the ham and cheese.

Aeolun 8y ago

We have a more or less similar practice in the Netherlands and Japan (bringing a homemade lunch, not necessarily bland), but I find that I really enjoy going out and trying different places to lunch. I guess I could save a ton of money if I didn’t, but it’s worth it to me. Lunch is indeed something I look forward to.

Tharkun 8y ago
I feel the same. Sadly it's quite hard to find a healthy lunch near my office, and this is why I'm overweight.
- throes_death 8y ago
  Your inability to find healthy lunch near your office isn't why you are overweight.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    Well, given the fact that they lunch out regardless, the proximate cause is likely that all the food around is covered in fat.
  - Tharkun 8y ago
    Of course not, I wasn't being entirely serious, but it's certainly a contributing factor. I enjoy the social aspect of going out for lunch (and the flavour aspect, of course). It's difficult to eat out and eat something healthy, even salads are soaked in high-calory dressings. Perhaps this Norwegian "art" of eating a bland lunch that "should be a disappointment" is someone's twisted idea of a good time. But it's not mine.
    - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      To be fair: I'm American and live in Norway and have for a bit over 5 years now. I have found lunches to be a bit different. While you can sit by yourself and read, you can also be part of a group really easily. In language and civics classes, we were encouraged to sit down and talk to others at lunches and breaks - especially if we were working somewhere with a common lunch time. I don't find social pressure to bring what everyone else brings and others are usually a bit jealous when someone brings in something yummy. In context, the lunches are about like a peanut butter or baloney sandwich or something. Not really... bland, per se, but non-offensive. You can also pass some of the options off as healthy, which helps. In any case, you still get some of those social aspects even if you don't get the change of scenery that usually goes along with them.

wodenokoto 8y ago

> “That’s the Norwegian way and it’s most peculiar, because it’s not the same in Sweden or Denmark, Iceland or Finland. It’s a very Norwegian tradition” Bullshit. Madpakke, consisting of open sandwiches on rye is still very common in Denmark, and was the bane of my childhood school years, though thankfully most office places has moved on to provide workers with a decent cantina, and more and more school children are handed money to buy their lunch. As the article states in the beginning, these stale packed lunches are not much to look forward too.

robin_reala 8y ago
It’s definitely not the same in Sweden; the husmanskost lunch is a nightmare for office workers having been designed to give you a big load of calories (mostly in the form of melted butter) in the middle of the day to keep you ploughing / sawing / mining all afternoon. It’s pretty difficult to find a sandwich or light lunch here as most of the dagens menus assume hot food and a side dish of salad and a slice of bread (plus obligatory coffee).
- henrikschroder 8y ago
  Back when I was working in Stockholm, we usually went to a certain place on Fridays to grab a greasy lunch and a pint of beer, and when everyone came back to the office, absolutely no work got done, it was glorious! :-D
henrikschroder 8y ago
I never saw anyone bring lunch to work when I worked in Copenhagen over a decade ago, but the at work cantinas were a lot more common than they were in Sweden. Whereas in Sweden, the work cantinas were phased out in the 80's and the norm if you have an office job is that everyone leaves the office for lunch, and you go to a lunch restaurant, sit down, and eat your lunch. I really tried finding something similar to Swedish lunch restaurants in Copenhagen, but I could never find any. There's only "real" restaurants, which are too slow and upscale and expensive for lunch every day, or they're too fast-food-y or only really do take-away, that you're supposed to take back to the office and sit there and eat. Drove me nuts. I have a bunch of Swedish friends who all came back from work trips to Norway, cursing, because the &¤#&#"&"# Norwegians would schedule meetings over lunch, and then everyone else would just pull up their /¤#&"&!"#&#" matpakke in the middle of the meeting, while my friends were stuck with nothing to eat, because they were used to taking a break, going out, sitting down, eating lunch, and then going back to the office. Instead, they had to sit and starve in meetings.

xte 8y ago

Hem, I't common in any country of the world, perhaps with different names, different food, different packing but the same principles. In Italy is called "schiscetta" (read in English Skishetta), in Japan is called "bento" etc... In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. Have seen the different idea of productivity in few countries and their relevant economic level I think there is no real correlation...

claudiawerner 8y ago
>In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. This is fascinating and very interesting from a radical point of view. A while ago there was a thread on HN about if it would be bad for a workplace to have bunks and a kitchen such that employees can sleep there. To me the whole idea felt incredibly dystopian. In the end, though, some authors have observed a kind of cultural shift, in which we are no longer told what to do at work, but rather the workplace tries to align our desire to theirs, the analogy Frédéric Lordon[0] uses is that desires can be expressed as vectors, and the modern workplace, lacking the old methods to make us work (because they are culturally inappropriate, or illegal) must use such a method which seems a whole lot less pernicious at face value. It's not only the time to make the lunch which counts as unpaid labour, it's also the time and expense to travel to work (and according to some stories on HN this can get to absurd levels) and due to the phenomena I mentioned a lot of time spent around work doing non-work activities (though this is more common if there is a "workplace culture"). [0] "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire"
- xte 8y ago
  Take it with veeery long fireplace tongs but IMO any living being, not only human try to have the most he/she want at the least "cost" so we humans during our evolution we do various kind of effort with various kind of success to have more working less. Nowadays we struggle a lot less to accomplish many tasks we need, for instance we can cut wood with machines so quickly and with very little fatigue, we can dig ground with an excavator in minutes instead of hours and hours of manual work with shovel and pickaxe etc. Naturally for us it's still "fatigue" so we want do automate more, work less. That's natural nor positive nor negative (we may say that avoid struggling and have much free time is positive and counterarguments that we discover obesity, diabetes and many other disease due to that) but trying to bend it to have people work is a subtle form of slavery. For instance Google classic "game-fill workplace" to me is more a way to "capture" workforce than a nice way of work... Of course I'd like to work in my favorite field so work seems more pleasure than work but with some limits: work is work, play is play. Even if they seems to blend work have expiring dates, require a certain kind of attention and do not require other kind of attention. Play have normally no expiring dates, no guarantees etc. Long story short my own personal "best compromise" way is being responsible adults that try to play together for our own sake. The modern idea of reject individual responsibilities and so being directed like sheep in the flock happily ignorant is not really different than ancient slavery and it certainly not a thing I like.

funtastique 8y ago

Oh boy, I would call it an "art of 'meaningless journalism'". There are a numerous reasons, for the bland "bag lunch" (literally "the food pack" (matpakke)) - where do i start? - the sandwich price in the shop is 4-8 quid, make the math, cook at home - sky high prices in the cafes, etc - weak selection of meats /cheeses in local shops (agricultural-protectionism/limited EU import) - high prices on meats /cheeses in local shops + 4x of the EU average (agricultural-protectionism/limited EU import) - the poor past + jante thing - the stubbornness of general local population - "(grand)parents always did it like that" - strong creeping low-profile nationalism - "norwegian way", "buy norwegian", "eat norwegian, etc" - everybody is making "foodpack" why should i stick out - 30 mins - not enough time for anything(cafe, etc) - sparse cafes and cantinas etc. - most cantinas serve just this specific company or this specific office building. More often than not, you are not expected to go into the other company's cantina. - some work places are way too far from any cafe, etc.(say you are a tree logger) - automatic thing, don't have to think much - going out (work, hiking, skiing, whatever) - take a foodpack. You dont know when/where you next meal will be "thinking" as most of Norway is non-urban. Army rations taste probably like 10x better than the typical bland norwegian foodpack. But you can continue to gourge on the "Norwegian" propaganda on bbc and elsewhere. p.s. Downvote all you want, reality hurts, huh?

tallanvor 8y ago
A lot of the reasons you specify are pretty much true, it's the way you word it (and posting more than once when not responding to anyone) that is hurting your comment the most.

mort96 8y ago

I'm a Norwegian. This mostly isn't wrong, a lot of us do use "matpakke"s, but I object to this quote: “In Norway, you’re not supposed to look forward to your lunch,” says Ronald Sagatun, who works in advertising and hosts a YouTube channel about Norwegian culture. “It’s kind of a strict thing. It’s easy to make, easy to carry around, easy to eat, but it should be a disappointment.” Maybe it's "kind of a strict thing" in some parts of the country, but certainly not where I am (Oslo). While everyone did eat a "matpakke" for lunch in the first 7 years of school ("barneskolen"), ever since, the places I've been has served hot lunch in a cafeteria. This includes the second level of school ("ungdomsskolen"), our version of high school ("videregående"), university, three workplaces (which is two summer jobs and the place I'm working now). It's not like it's uncommon for someone to bring a "matpakke" but saying it's "kind of a strict thing" that "you're not supposed to look forward to your lunch" is bullshit, at least in the general form presented in the article. (I'm also not sure about the pronounciation "maadpukke". Maybe it follows some internationally recognized form of phonetic writing, but if it doesn't, that "d" and "u" is really strange to me. I'd just say you pronounce it straightforward like "matpakke", with the Norwegian pronounciation of "a". Judge for yourself based on how Google Translate says it: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&tl=en&text=matpakke https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=no&t...)

funtastique 8y ago
10 year expat here. Part which I don't get is how come "warm lunches" for schools typical/natural/expected in the rest of the developed world never caught up here. Equality uber-alles?
- mort96 8y ago
  As I wrote in my comment, warm lunch _is_ catching on, at least in my part of the country. As for why it's not as common as in some other countries (yet), there's no "equality über alles". I'd guess the reason is that Norway was until relatively recently a poor country with little good farmland, so most of our food culture comes from there.
- roel_v 8y ago

draw_down 8y ago

Can’t understand that at all. Lunch is one of the 3 best meals of the day, don’t waste it!

funtastique 8y ago

Here goes Norwegian propaganda: "BBC noticed us and our "SPECIAL NORWEGIAN WAY" of making sandwiches, oh my!" https://www.nettavisen.no/livsstil/mads-og-ronald-lagde-video-om-matpakke-plutselig-ringte-bbc/3423576335.html https://www.nettavisen.no/livsstil/mads-og-ronald-lagde-vide... p.s.And this sort of food is definitely not healthy. p.p.s. "hot food" - It is not a big thing, until you consider the notion that sandwiches of any kind are one step away from cancer/ gastric ulcer inducing ramen packs and 'snickers' snack. Then you kinda start thinking how good are any sandwiches for you during the lunch time. Same goes for kids. This is why warm soup is anyday better than "fast-track unbalanced(no veggies) sandwich"(R) as described here/in the article. Of course 'hot food' type makes a difference - balanced potatos, salad, meat/fish combo or a soup is 100 light years away from say 'hot pockets' fake food.

imhoguy 8y ago

Related to the last photo: try to not eat anything in front of computer at work. It creates bad habit and links computer work (stressor) with eating (rewarding stimulus) which will probably lead to obesity. Always take a break.

jakobegger 8y ago
I lost a few kilos by eating a packed lunch at my desk instead of going out for lunch. (With a packed lunch I decide on what to eat before I'm hungry, which tends to be way more reasonable. When I'm hungry all I want is a big burger with fries! By deciding ahead of time I avoid eating that.)

elgfare 8y ago

Norwegian here. I pack a lunch like this about every other day. I enjoy eating it much more than you would think from reading this.

rcarmo 8y ago

I’m Portuguese and (even having worked in London and Amsterdam) find this line of thought profoundly alien. While it is true that there is a trend towards longer lunchtimes here, packing your lunch, eating in and not taking the time to leave the office and have lunch at different places nearby (and socialize while doing so) has a bunch of negative connotations... For me, at least, the dietary implications alone make this (and the typical British work lunch) a major put-off.

gazarullz 8y ago

I am living in Denmark working for a famous toy company. I moved from Southern Europe to Denmark a few years ago and the thing that struck me the most was the 20 minutes lunch break (since the schedule is 7.40 hours and 20 minutes of lunch break). I feel it was too rushed and my stomach had hard times adapt to those time frames.

zrobotics 8y ago
A tip from my blue collar days, when I also only had a 20 minute lunch: eat a decent breakfast, and pack something like an apple/granola bar that you can quickly snack on at ~2-3 pm. If i try to wolf down food that quickly I just feel ill & sluggish, but eating a smaller lunch & a mid-afternoon snack actually left me feeling better. I continue to do this, it helps avoud afternoon sluggishness. Although I would miss the rest of break time, I'd much rather work 0.5 hr later in the day and have a brief moment of respite.
- gazarullz 8y ago
  That is what I ended up doing as-well, extending my lunch break for about 15-20 minutes. But that in retrospective puts me in the situation where I am left sitting alone in the canteen due to colleagues finishing long before me.

dekhn 8y ago

I'm from the US but visited Norway as a kid. The open face sandwich is one of my biggest memories. "But how do you store it without making a mess?" "Wax paper". "But why not just add a second piece of bread?" "We don't do that here".

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

For several months i am taking my lunch to work for that reason - lunch break takes less time (also the food in those restaurants is so expensive and worst of all doesn't taste that good) Now I know that I am following progressive Norwegian best practices!

uptime 8y ago

I find the matpakke thing to be agreeable, at least he way my Norwegian friends do it. Pack what you like! In the US anyway, lunch can be expensive and time consuming if done at restaurants. Portions can be large and that makes me sluggish. My biggest problem with it is the concept of choice - that eats up my time allotment more than the eating! And for social time I would rather talk with coffee than over mouthfuls of food.

gonzus 8y ago

I find it very hard to believe you would get "stern looks from colleagues" simply because you made yourself a different sandwich... It this for real? If I had to bring a sandwich to work, I would certainly make it with something I do enjoy eating, colleagues be damned.

lb1lf 8y ago
Stern looks is probably exaggerated, but I unusual sandwiches or toppings are likely to draw a comment or two. However, this is mostly in the context of being a conversation starter, though - at least in my experience. "Roast beef, huh? Celebrate something this weekend, did you?" I do think the Norwegian interviewed is exaggerating a bit for effect, though - several of his statement are not what I - being Norwegian - would consider normal or expected by your coworkers. As an irrelevant aside, the town in the illustration is Ålesund. I can see my old house in the photo!
- funtastique 8y ago
  While true, its the never-ending sarcasm that permeates through these idiotic questions that gets me. To norwegians: Why should anybody care what I packed for lunch, mind personal business and stop looking into neighbors sandwich. While at it find better topics as conversation starter. p.s. still while at it, the sarcasm, that most norwegians call 'humor', would be much more interesting cultural feat to explore in an article or 2.
  - draw_down 8y ago
    Yes, that sounds annoying, and honestly kind of sad that they apparently feel a need to do that.
ingenieros 8y ago
Read up on "janteloven" or Jante law and this will give you some background as to why in nordic countries standing out by doing things differently is frowned upon.

ForrestN 8y ago

Am I missing something? This seems to be an overview of Norwegian lunch culture plus a summary of the benefits of having a routine, which the author thinks can be accomplished just by having lunch? Do they not routinely eat meals at roughly the same time where the author lives? Can confirm the art of American lunch includes sometimes bringing easy to make, cheap, boring food to work, and that most Americans eat lunch on a routine basis.

crazygringo 8y ago

Wow. Kind of nice to hear the US isn't the only place with a traditional hurried low-nutritional-value lunch, and that at least one other country has made the same kind of mistake we have. But also that comments here indicate nutritionally healthy hot lunches are now a thing in Norway, same as they're now common at least in tech worker cafeterias. May we all eventually move away from cheap processed meats and old preserved pates, to meals with fresh healthy protein and fresh healthy vegetables!

Sam_Harris 8y ago

Useless site for mobile devices.

asah 8y ago

love the sandwiches, but "Norway is a rich country with one of the world’s highest rates of GDP per capita. This is partly due to oil reserves in the North Sea, but it’s also to do with the nation’s productivity." hahahahahahaha "partly" - understatement of the year. Norway without oil is like Alaska without oil. That said, Norway has managed their endowment brilliantly and at scale, to such an amazing degree that it gives me hope for the human race.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

The horror. We get something like 29000 lunches in our lifetime, and 16000 are at work. To piss this away with boring bad sandwiches is an abomination. A good meal is one of the major pleasures of life. A whole culture that fumbles this in so fundamental a way is a tragedy.

tarjei 8y ago

I think the discussion here is missing a vital point in the article: Work when your at work, then go home. This is key to getting a better work life balance and also to make it easier for people to combine careers with kids and family.