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How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch
- diehunde 7y agoIn Chile, eating this kind of sandwich is also very common. Not so much for lunch but for dinner. Sometimes even just bread and butter. I feel in the US people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat.
- cerberusss 7y agoThis is just like Dutch lunch. Indeed, I'm not sure what's special about it. Definitely not limited to Norway. My previous girlfriend was also Dutch and used to this kind of lunch. Her employer sent her to London for a month, and she got used to expensive lunches. Spending a couple of pounds everyday on lunch, hoo boy, that adds up.
- rhnmhdv 7y agoThis is a common evening snack thing in India as well. I grew up on this.
- mstade 7y agoMy experience living in London was that most of my colleagues were perfectly content picking up a sandwich from the nearest EAT or Waitrose or whatever. Every day a tired, boring sandwich for lunch. I just couldn't understand it. Some stores were just aisle after aisle of sandwiches, I'd never seen anything like it.
- zabzonk 7y agoWhat couldn't you understand? Relatively affordable, and lots of variety (that's why there are "aisle after aisle" of them). And the same places sell salads, noodles and much other stuff.
- Vrondi 7y agoIf you're going to eat a plain, sliced-bread sandwich every day, why not make your own to bring from home? Not exactly hard, expensive, or time consuming. Always tastes better fresher. Why pay more for a shop bought cold sandwich that isn't fresh, hot, or luxurious?
- signal11 7y agoThere was some previous discussion about sandwiches on HN (!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895267 A lot of people clearly like eating their lunch at their desk. I suspect it’s a cultural thing — while I enjoy the occasional meal away, most of the time I like eating at my desk.
- Symbiote 7y agoPrepared, packaged food in Britain, especially London, is much better than most of Europe. In Germany or France, a sandwich from a supermarket isn't fresh, isn't good, and isn't interesting. In Britain, it's at least some of these things. In France or Germany, you can go to a bakery and buy a sandwich, but that's slower and dearer.
- ajdlinux 7y agoAs an Australian I was very confused the first time I flew British Airways while I was on my way back home from the Netherlands to find that they proudly advertise their buy-on-board menu as the "Marks & Spencer on-board menu". Having never been to M&S but having a vague awareness that they exist, I didn't know what to expect, other than to think that if I saw Qantas advertising a new menu "co-created with David Jones" I'd be rather suspicious. I've since been to a M&S and discovered their rather extensive food section which is rather better than the average Australian department store. (Of course, BA, like all other European airlines I've experienced, is distinctly average at best, and having to pay for M&S prepacked sandwiches is definitely part of that.)
- enz 7y agoWhen I lived and worked in France, I was pretty happy with Monoprix’s high-end fresh sandwiches. It was around €5-6 if I remember correctly.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zabzonk 7y agoI worked in the Netherlands on and off for several years, and the thing I never got used to was how appalling the lunches were. I did a presentation at KLM corporate headquarters, and at lunch asked the people I was presenting to - "How do you put up with this, day after day?" They all looked glum, and said "There is no alternative". And don't get me started on what passes as Chinese food in the Netherlands.
- jvagner 7y agoI lived in suburban Amsterdam and the food truck that came at lunch specialized in those puffy-bread and single slice meat/cheese sandwiches. I usually bought two and combined the ingredients and tossed the second bread. Might've been more palatable with better bread, but these were typical bad lunch sandwich bread buns. That said, I can live on PB&J, especially with fresh PB and a good bit of toast.
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoMost Dutch people just eat sandwiches for lunch. Typically just bread and something on it. Some offices have cantines and many of them are terrible. I was a Dutch office worker for 10 years in different offices and ate all kinds of different things. Now I work from home and continue to eat sandwiches almost every day. I just like them. As for the Chinese food. You need to go into a big city and eat it. Don't eat Dutch Chinese food in small villages or suburban areas. Both Rotterdam and Amsterdam have amazing Chinese food. And I bet you never even tried Surinamese food before..
- zabzonk 7y ago> Most Dutch people just eat sandwiches for lunch. And so did I when I worked there, but I made my own. If I forgot to do so, I nicked one of my Dutch colleagues sandwiches - they couldn't stand the cafeteria ones either. Chinese food was in Utrecht and Amsterdam - it bore no resemblance to the food you get in London, and you never saw ethnic Chinese eating there, unlike in London. I'm not trying to be racist about the Dutch people - I enjoyed working in the Netherlands very much. Except for the food.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoTotally agree. People in the US spend a lot of time thinking about eating but then most of what they eat is either plain crap or super high calorie. A slice of (good) bread with some butter or cheese can be very satisfying if it’s good quality.
- hnaccy 7y ago>I feel in the US people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat. It can be both...
- notJim 7y agoIn Germany, the typical dinner seemed to be bread with butter and cheeses and cured meats like ham or sausages. It was "simple" of course, but also delicious because of the quality of all of the ingredients. However, they did eat a larger cooked meal in the early afternoon.
- ip26 7y agoI often spend an hour or two cooking in the evening for my family. It's tough to find things which are cheap, healthy, and convenient to prepare. Sandwiches are fine but not as a large percentage of our diet.
- i_don_t_know 7y agoSame in Germany. We have (at least) two words for dinner: Abendbrot (evening bread) and Abendessen (evening meal). They are used interchangeably regardless of what you actually eat. Traditionally, breakfast is also just slices of bread or bread roll? (Brötchen, Semmel, etc) topped with butter and a slice of cheese or meat, or jam or honey.
- j7ake 7y agoPreferring flavorful food is definitely not a US thing, it's probably a human thing. Humans in general prefer more flavorful food to less flavorful food. If the economics were such that a slice of bread with cheese cost the exact same as a quick Michelin-star meal at a restaurant, I think you would see a shift of people changing their bread and cheese diet.
- asdff 7y agoButter is riddled with controversy in the American mind. However, I think many people whip up PBJ on the fly pretty frequently. Lots of protein, carbs for brain fuel, and a hit of sugar to perk you up and tide you over. Throw in a banana sliced longwise and it can become a meal.
- collyw 7y agoChilean cuisine is strange. They have high quality ingredients available, but don't do much with them.
- Vrondi 7y agoIn America, it depends what part of the country you are in, whether your largest meal of the day will be the mid-day meal of lunch (called dinner in some regions) or supper (the evening meal, also called dinner in some regions). Even if you eat a small sandwich for lunch, it will be rare for it to have butter on it (unless it is fried, like grilled cheese). It will likely also have various spreads, sauces, or vegetables on it. A very basic/classic American sandwich has a slice or two of ham, slice of cheese, pickles, and mustard, for example, which is much more complex and flavorful than what this article talks about. The only meal where Americans might commonly eat only bread and butter is breakfast, and then it very likely to be toasted.
- mogadsheu 7y agoFormer Norway resident here, 3yrs. Their lunch traditions are definitely basic, as they were not a wealthy country for hundreds of years before striking oil in the 60s. The point to remember is that while the fare is basic, the quality is typically very good. Their cheese is extra creamy and nutritious, as is the bread. The same goes for the milk. Many Europeans won’t drink the milk here in the States because the quality tends to be much lower, due to feed/living conditions for livestock. Garbage in = garbage out.
- colanderman 7y agoI like bread, and have visited many countries. The loaf I remember most is from Norway. Crusty outside, chewy inside, overall delicious.
- peterwwillis 7y agoThe milk quality in the US is fine, it's just different. Each carton has been pasteurized differently, then homogenized, fortified, and contains milk from thousands of cows. There are lots of other differences that affect flavor, mouthfeel, aroma. We may also use different cows, environment, etc.
- Retric 7y agoUS Milk also tends to be rather old by the time it reaches consumers, with ~2 weeks being surprisingly common. That has several implications which alter it’s taste. Of course this varies a lot based on the store and product.
- RandallBrown 7y agoMilk in the US is only a couple days old by the time it's in the grocery store. Unless most people in Europe are buying direct from the dairies, I can't imagine it's appreciably faster. Even then, I grew up having milk delivered direct from the dairy and definitely don't notice any difference between what I grew up with and what I typically buy in the grocery store. I would guess most of the flavor difference comes from pasteurization differences, since Ultra High Temperature pasteurization appears to be the norm over there.
- magicalhippo 7y agoAs a positive aside from the short lunch breaks is that you get home earlier. I'd hate having an hour+ lunch break.
- bigred100 7y agoSounds pretty good to me.
- gnud 7y agoWell, unlike the US we usually have tasty bread here. That helps :)
- Symbiote 7y agoThe first time I went to the US, the waitress brought over extra bread, "I know you Europeans like bread, so I brought you extra". It was awful. Like ecological packaging pellets. I didn't want to offend her, so I hid the extra rolls in my bag. (We had other meals that were excellent. The quality of meals was very erratic, and had little relation to the price.)
- drstewart 7y agoI feel in Europe people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat. Oh wait, that's what someone was criticizing the US for earlier in this thread. Weird. So is that the case or not?
- kristofferR 7y agoI feel like this article somewhat undersells brødskriver. They can be delicious. Most important is good bread, which is super common here, despite it being totally unavailable in most other countries. All ordinary grocery stores get freshly baked bread every day, whole in paper bags of course. For example - with a thick slice of butter, then some oven-baked liver paste and two slices of gherkin on top and boom - you have something delicious in a single minute.
- Symbiote 7y ago> Most important is good bread, which is super common here, despite it being totally unavailable in most other countries. I think the rest of Europe will argue with this.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoI think a lot of America will argue with this.
- thawaway1837 7y agoThe majority of Americans get their bread from the grocery store, and by the time they eat it it’s probably several days if not weeks old. It is true that you can get extremely high quality fresh bread from a bakery (or even bakeries inside grocery stores) but that isn’t really part of the culture and good quality bread is usually considered an occasional treat.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago“People don’t usually buy it” is a different claim to “it is totally unavailable”.
- shantly 7y agoA baguette in my Midwestern city close to as good as a standard Parisian corner store baguette is like $6. You can get some that are "good" but in fact way worse than the real deal for $4-5. Approach the 2 Euro baguette in price and we're talking something that's so much worse it's unrecognizable. Pastries have a similar ~2x markup and are still usually not quite as good as the norm there even at the high end of the price range. IDK what it is that makes decent baked goods so expensive here. We grow all the wheat, FFS. Apparently kinda halfway knowing how to produce a plain-ass croissant that is somewhat reminiscent of an actual croissant is rare and expensive knowledge around here. We flat-out cannot produce affordable baked goods & bread that aren't fairly bad, it seems—simply not-bad is luxury priced here, and you may have to drive a ways to get it. [EDIT] and this bleeds over into anything requiring bread, like a sandwich. If you buy one out and it's not quite expensive, it will for sure be using pretty bad bread and there'll be a fairly low cap on how good it might be. [EDIT EDIT] toss in the fact that decent or better cheese is more expensive here, and the sandwich situation is downright dire.
- sverige 7y agoThis is the lunch I grew up eating in the U.S. Personally, I much prefer it over all the crap most people eat for lunch. But then again, my family is Swedish, so no surprise I guess.
- einr 7y agoInterestingly, Sweden and Norway differ a lot when it comes to lunch culture. Here, people generally bring leftovers of yesterday's dinner in boxes to heat up at work or they go out to a lunch restaurant. Almost invariably proper, hot meals. If you bring just a sandwich or two to work people will kind of look at you funny like "that's not REAL food"
- opdahl 7y agoI'm a Norwegian, and where I work I have the option of eating a big warm lunch, but I very rarely do. I've noticed that eating a big lunch makes the following hour extremely unproductive, so for the last year I have made a matpakke with 3 slices of bread. Normal _pålegg_ is liver paste, cheese or peanut butter. I can easily go through my lunch in just few minutes, and even while working at the same time. My thought process is that I'd rather be more productive during working hours and go home early, than waste 2 hours in the middle of the day on a heavy calorie lunch.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> 3 slices of bread ... liver paste, cheese or peanut butter ... waste 2 hours in the middle of the day on a heavy calorie lunch How many calories are in your sandwich though?! Sounds extremely calorie dense!
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIt's a single slice of cheese or meat. American deli-style sandwiches where there is more filling than bread are not a thing in Scandinavia. Also, if you were wondering what's up with "caviar" as a topping, it's this stuff made from cod roe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalles_Kaviar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalles_Kaviar
- chrisseaton 7y agoYes I'm European as well. Still seems like an extremely hefty sandwich from the video...
- combatentropy 7y agoIs this the only thing they eat between breakfast and dinner? I think I would be hungry again in 2-3 hours.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- magicalhippo 7y agoOur bread contains a lot of whole grain flour. Don't underestimate how that effects how full you feel. When losing weight I found I could easily get away with skipping lunch entirely, just two or three slices of bread as a late breakfast. But only if the bread had sufficiently high amount of whole grain flour (>90%). The days I only got hold of 50-60% whole grain bread I had to top up with a small lunch.
- luminiferous 7y agoIt's probably the fiber content, if I had to guess. Fiber is really good at making you feel full, which is why psyllium husk is sold as a dietary supplement.
- BooneJS 7y ago3rd generation American, 100% Norwegian decent. This looks like my school cold lunch in the 80’s. I’ve eaten the brown cheese, braunschweiger, head cheese, and venison summer sausage. Some toppings were better than others.
- sunstone 7y agoThat makes my go to peanut butter and banana look gourmet. :)
- mxcrossb 7y agoIt seems like this is the us equivalent to me. The nice thing about this approach is you don’t have to use so much wrapping paper like in the linked article’s video. Both the banana and sandwich come in their own case.
- hasbot 7y ago"With the exception of employees at some large companies that offer hot lunches, he adds, traditionally everyone from the lowest-level worker to upper management would eat their own individually wrapped, brought-from-home matpakke." Virtually no one eating lunch at cafes has a big impact on the economy. Imagine how many cafes, food carts, etc in the US would close down if everyone stopped eating lunch out.
- lonelappde 7y ago9 months ago, 137 comments, with a less obnoxious title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186
- dwd 7y agoAustralian here: Cheese and Vegemite (yeast extract) sandwiches are what a lot of people grew up having for their school lunches. My kids like it because it's quick to eat. For the Norwegians, is Jarlsberg your typical cheese in a matpakke? Probably my favourite sandwich cheese!
- magicalhippo 7y agoThe most common one is Norvegia, which has a rounder, milder taste. But Jarlsberg is more or less #2, and my favorite (especially the aged one).
- marvin 7y agoNorvegia is sort of like a milder and less fatty Emental, if anyone wants a different reference.
- dwd 7y agoWe know Emmental as "Swiss" cheese and it is a lot more common than Jarlsberg. "Tasty" cheddar is far and away the most popular with Swiss being the other cheese you might get to choose from if you bought a sandwich in a bakery.
- Sendotsh 7y agoI still generally eat a vegemite sandwich for lunch every day, but these days it's nicer bread with vegemite, cheese, avocado, and tomato. While not as basic as the Norwegian one, I like having a simple lunch that's the same most days. Stops me pigging out on random convenient crap, but is enough to get through the day. My kids are vegemite fiends too, and despite us giving them plenty of options, they'll nearly always choose a vegemite/cheese sandwich for lunch.
- naravara 7y agoI notice all the people I know who naturally stay in good shape tend to eat really simple lunches most of the time. I’m not sure if it’s just less temptation to overeat when you have the same stuff every day or if they’re just wired to get less enjoyment out of food and are less prone to overeating as a result.
- request_id 7y agoIt is amazing how similar the comments on today's article, are from a HN thread about matpakke 9 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186
- peltier 7y agoThe matpakke never changes
- lonelappde 7y agoIt's amazing how HN has a tradition of every day I'm+ making the same tired comments on the same topics (matpakke, Apple, Google, China, Java,...) including mockery of other bland repetitive traditions like matpakke lunch. Over on Reddit they call this "self-awarewolves".
- tylerjwilk00 7y ago> Plus, it might help cut down on the dreaded decision fatigue faced by workers every time lunch rolls around during the week. > “Maybe then you realize how simply eliminating the decisions on your weekly lunches gives you more mental clarity during the day, the week, the month.” I didn't know this was common. I struggled with this so much years ago that I created a simple tool [1] so I wouldn't have to make the decision everyday. [1] https://easydecisionmaker.com/ https://easydecisionmaker.com/
- reaperducer 7y ago"why must everything we consume be happy and exciting?" Because life is short.
- lonelappde 7y agoLife is short, so we should focus on what's important, not on distractions. Look at Google where they got so obsessed with eating gourmet meals all day and fighting about perceived drops in qualt that they have 100K people just churning 15 year old products (while a few create new meaningful things).
- ericdykstra 7y agoThis seems pretty good to me! One of my most vivid memories from visiting the Netherlands as a child was the simple, but delicious breakfasts that consisted of a choice between a variety of delicious breads, and a few cheeses or other toppings to choose from to top it. Certainly a more enjoyable and healthier way to have a utilitarian meal than Soylent, which is honestly just degrading.
- crazygringo 7y agoSerious question: how is this enough calories for lunch? Assume you need 2,500 calories/day. Suppose you need a third of those at lunch, that's 830. (And given the traditional light continental breakfast, I'd expect an even larger lunch to compensate, so probably closer to 1,000.) A single sandwich with three layers of bread and three single layers of cheese or meat, can't be over 400 calories. I'd be starving and unproductive all afternoon. What's the secret?
- magicalhippo 7y agoThe secret for me was to eat high fiber and high protein foods. Both help with feeling full. So I'd have 100% whole grain bread with lean meat and some cheese. I'd use a flavorful cheese so I didn't have to use too much in order to not go over budget (in terms of calories). I used things like mustard instead of butter. With this I could go about 5 hours without feeling particularly hungry (office job).
- iikoolpp 7y ago> Assume you need 2,500 calories/day Well, your first mistake is there
- crazygringo 7y agoAs a 6'1" male who goes to the gym regularly, I need 2,800 calories/day just to maintain my weight which is in the middle of the range for normal-weight BMI. (If I'm trying to build strength, I need a bit more.) So enough with the snark, please. 2,500 cal/day is well-known as the average male guideline, while 2,000 cal/day is the average female guideline. None of this changes my original point. Obviously nobody's healthily surviving on 1,200 calories/day.
- wingerlang 7y agoIf you care about training you will adjust, and eat what you need and not 2 slices of bread. People generally don’t count calories, certainly not how many percentage per meal they need. There’s also breakfast, snacking, dinner, more snacks etc.
- richk449 7y agoAs an American who has eaten two pieces of cheese with two pieces of bread And a piece of fruit for lunch for at least a decade now, I was happy when I saw an article on this a few years ago. I started telling people I wasn’t weird, I was just Scandinavian. After the fifteenth article on the same topic, I’m sick of it. I didn’t even read this one.
- sakopov 7y agoPopular in Russia as well and known as buterbrod (butter bread).
- l0b0 7y agoBy the definition in this article, Italian cooking would be the most boring thing you could possibly eat.
- collyw 7y agoPersonally I find Italian food pretty boring and very overrated. Most people seem to disagree with me when I say that though.
- eitland 7y agoOnly partially related but still somewhat interesting IMO: First time I randomly enter into a site supported by scroll.com after I got an account.
- koffiekop 7y agoClearly the author has never been to the Netherlands.
- Animats 7y agoThe British version is the plowman's lunch. Without the add-ons one sees today. The Japanese version is Calorie Mate Balanced Food Block, from Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company. Available in convenience stores and vending machines.
- NickNameNick 7y agoI thought you were joking about the Calorie mate, but they have a wikipedia page... In NZ you can get a "One Square Meal" pair of muesli bars, but they're expensive, so you'd only expect people to buy them if they were in the middle of a road-trip, bike ride or other activity
- cjrp 7y agoFun fact: the ploughman's lunch dates back to the 1950s when cheese companies promoted it in order to sell more cheese.
- Animats 7y agoThe cheese mafia has gotten completely out of control. Over half of Dunkin (formerly Dunkin' Donuts) items now include cheese. Every lunchbox at Starbucks includes cheese.
- librish 7y agoIt's kind of a bummer to see so many comments going straight for the judgmental angle. I think you will be happier as a person if you try to take on a more curiosity driven mindset. There are a bunch of pros to eating like this, and there are a bunch of cons. It would be equally silly to have a thread about long Spanish lunches, socializing, and siestas being filled with comments about how it's a "waste of time".
- gorgoiler 7y agoSmall pieces of wax paper, precut for packing sandwiches together? Wonderful! I would love for my own culture to adopt such a convenience! So much better than cling film or foil.
- jay_kyburz 7y agoI thought that looked kind of wasteful, here in Australia we just put the two buttered sides together with the filling in between. Then you put that in your reusable luchbox that you take to work everyday.
- dominicr 7y agoAh, but in Norway slices of bread must be eaten individually. So if you did this you'd need to peel them apart, which ends up with one slice having more of the topping than the other. Especially so with the pate toppings.
- oxfordmale 7y agoThis is not unique to Norway. In the Netherlands I was basically raised on a "Norwegian" sandwich lunch, although peanut butter could be used as a topping as well.
- konschubert 7y agoAs a German, I’m confused why this article was written. Doesn’t the rest of the world eat bread with cheese on it? > They typically consist of two or three slices of bread, smeared lightly with butter, each topped with a single slice of cheese or meat, or perhaps a thin layer of jam, liver paste, or tubed caviar.
- holstvoogd 7y agoI'm pretty sure it is written for Americans, they eat for lunch what I would call dinner a lot it seems?
- jypepin 7y agoif you watch the video from the article, it is explained that this mattpakke is not a sandwich, but something less than that.
- pierot 7y agoThis is almost exactly like in Belgium. We do have similar word for på leg which is ‘beleg’ or ‘toespijs’. And we also pack it in the morning, 3 or 4 slices. It is not as beautifully wrapped in paper with in-between papers, though. Moreover, we have decent bread in Belgium. And it doesn’t come in a plastic bag. It’s more similar to the bread described in the article about bread in the UK seen on HN frontpage some days ago. I’ve seen people stating in the comments that this is heavy on calories. But that’s entirely not true. The butter is probably soja based, the cheese and meat are thinly spread.
- christkv 7y agoI grew up with matpakke and the 1/4 of milk every day and I hated it. It was depressing. Only good side was you got more time to play outside at school since you just wolfed down the food to get it over with. My kids go to a school in Spain and they get a 3 course meal every day for about 5 EUR a day. As a parent its great because you know they've had a full complete meal every day and you can just make a small evening meal.
- simongray 7y agoI also grew up with a madpakke (I'm in Denmark) and also hated it. Was pretty jealous of Swedish kids since I knew they got a hot school lunch and didn't have to eat boring, open-faced sandwiches and room temperature milk. I guess Norwegians have it just as bad as Danish kids.
- oleks 7y agoI spent 17 years in Denmark, and now a couple years in Norway, and I can say that the Danish lunch culture is far richer than the Norwegian one. I studied at a Danish gymnasium and university. I now work at a Norwegian university. For starters, Norwegians do not employ rye bread. Furthermore, Norwegian open-faced sandwiches have not evolved into full-blown smørrebrød - where stacking multiple ingredients is such essential part, that you cannot eat the common smørrebrød without cutlery. Case in point: https://www.valdemarsro.dk/luksus-stjerneskud/ https://www.valdemarsro.dk/luksus-stjerneskud/ At my university, we would lunch in groups, building such works of art during lunch-time from shared packs of ingredients. It may be that Danish school children get a "boring" lunch, similar to the Norwegian one. However, as Danes grow up, their lunches evolve in tastes and complexity. It seems less so in Norway, and that's OK, but a tiny bit boring :-P
- prpl 7y agoThis isn’t so different than once in Chile, except that comes later. Typically once is marraqueta or hallulla and tomatoes, avocado (palta), or chicken and mayonnaise. It is almost always with tea (it is a form of high tea) and served after a big lunch.
- Vrondi 7y agoWhat you describe is completely different from the bland food shown in the article.
- _pmf_ 7y ago> The typical Norwegian workday lunch break is only about 30 minutes. That's also pretty much the way it is in Germany.
- GrumpyNl 7y agoWhats with the obsession with Norwegian food and lunches. Feels like we are entering this subject on a regular basis.
- pjc50 7y agoBest served with a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar!
- peteretep 7y agoWhenever anyone says that local traditions should be respected, they tend to gloss over the fact that most traditions are like this.
- holografix 7y agoCould this also be correlated to a very long dark winter? I’d find a little sad to eat bread every day and not something warm and hearty but if I could get out of work maybe an hour earlier and that meant it wouldn’t already be dark outside...
- Nisse3 7y agoThe worst part isn't really that they eat poor sandwiches for lunch all their life, the worst part I'd say is that they often think it's the most healthy way to eat, and have no idea about good nutrition! (I'm Swedish born and raised, moved to Norway at age 20 and have lived here for 10 years.) I have had some arguments with colleagues about food during my years here. I have mostly worked at places with a canteen, with the option of eating a real, hot lunch for the same price as the bread. The most common thing is that many Norwegians think that their simple bread (almost never wholegrain) with a slice of cheese is a healthy lunch. People argue and think that eating two hot meals a day makes you fat. They think they gain weight because they eat a hot meal for lunch, and that the solution is switching back to bread again. To no-ones surprise, they don't lose any weight by doing the switch.
- jyriand 7y agoQuestion to matpakker's out here. Don't you feel hungry after eating only few slices of bread?
- awgaan 7y ago3 slices of bread with cheese. 2 slices with some kind of meat as pålegg. That last slice I almost have to force myself to eat because I can't afford to go down in weight. Hungry after? No way.
- tyfon 7y agoI'm pretty stuffed after eating two slices of bread with "pålegg". The bread is not a sugary white bread but it has whole grains and much more fiber. In general I don't think I'm a big eater though, most food servings I get outside of home are huuge.. I might be able to eat a 160g cheeseburger if I'm really hungry but that's without any side dishes.
- lonelappde 7y agoYour theory is that tens of thousands of people are hungry after eating lunch every day and didn't notice they aren't eating enough?
- tambarskjelve 7y agoAnother Norwegian here. If you don't find the matpakke boring enough, I am happy to tell you that we have an even more boring culinary tradition for breakfast, namely oatmeal. Preferably water boiled with a dab of butter. Crazy Norwegians might use milk instead of water, and sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on top. On the weekend, it is allowed to use a little cinnamon as well, but only sparingly.
- marvin 7y agoYou boil yours? I take my oatmeal raw, with milk and a light sprinkling of sugar.
- jfengel 7y agoIn Norway, the oatmeal is often steel-cut oats, which you really can't eat raw. If you're eating them with milk, you've probably got rolled oats, which are already cooked.
- marvin 7y agoYes. I am aware of this, but it's a distinction that I've never really seen in everyday use of the Norwegian language. Basically, there's two common versions of the product, they have the same name, but one of them is pre-cooked. I've always used the pre-cooked one for oatmeal though. Which might not quite make it the common American oatmeal, I don't know :P A common theme, the language often doesn't make subtle distinctions when it comes to food.
- rejschaap 7y agoIt seems there are three types of people based on what they deem most important regarding the meals they consume. There are people who primarily eat for sustanance, there are people who eat for pleasure and there are Americans. I'm solidly in the sustance camp, I tend to go for quick, easy and nutritious. Occasionally I will splurge and eat out at a good restaurant and enjoy it a lot. My wife is in the pleasure camp and doesn't want to waste any opportunity to have a delicious meal and even hates to have a simple breakfast or lunch. My three year old son might be an American, he just wants to eat McDondalds three times per day.
- yoz-y 7y agoIf you skip the fries and take a drink without sugar then McDonald's fits the first category quite well.
- daveslash 7y agoI was unemployed in my early 20s for over 2 months during the 2008-09 recession. My bank account was overdrawn and my credit cards were maxed out. 2 $20 McDonald's gift cards from the "random stuff" drawer was a God-Send. Double cheeseburgers were still 99 cents then, and had nearly 500 calories. I'd get 1 a day and supplement that with some flour-water mixture I pressed into a cookie sheet to make hardtack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack.
- mFixman 7y agoSmugness aside, there are big cultural issues regarding meal pleasure importance. One of my biggest shocks from moving from a Latin American country to Britain was when I realised that taking 1 hour lunches, which I consider the bare minimum, was seen as a terrible time splurge only reserved for the most important events.
- donmatito 7y agoThere are people who eat to work, and other who work to eat. I can totally see the need for simple, sandwich lunch, especially in rush periods. But sandwiches can be SO GOOD with the right bread and the right ingredients. Why waste an opportunity for a nice lunch, even if you cannot take a long lunch break ?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoThe saddest thing in the world. To waste 20,000 opportunities to enjoy good food is squandering a significant part of life.
- mcv 7y agoStill fancier than a Dutch sandwich, which is just two slices of buttered bread with some cheese or something in between. Or just one slice which is folded. (Although in recent years a lot of Dutch workers have discovered the fancier lunches from foreign traditions.)
- j7ake 7y agoWhere are Norwegians getting their vegetable intake?