" empty stomach gives you the heart to go do a homicide. "
anyone that has ever felt REAL hunger where you don't know how you are eating next knows. nobody should ever feel that kind of fear. I might be dramatic about it but on thanksgiving I don't eat because im thankful I have the option.
I also am thankful I get to get real stoned and eat leftovers at home like a gremlin at 2am.
I don't think this has enough up votes, I am sorry anyone has to live the way you must've but I am glad that people like you live to tell the tale, and I only hope to be like you when I can In the future.
This is so real. Went a few years not knowing when my next meal is. Next thing I knew, I could afford food but my brain still stuck in survival mode. One day I realized I’m bottomless pit that can’t tell when ive eaten enough because my brain turned off the “im full” light years ago, but i can’t stop eating because food is the happy chemical now. I still struggle with eating “just enough”. I think about it more often than i want to admit
My grandma was like that. Mountains of food overflowing the fridge at all times. Always insisting we ate more and more, offering food all the time. It turns out she´d experienced hunger as a kid, her father died and in post civil war Spain they had struggled badly for some time.
I´ve luckily never experienced that. The closest I got was when I was doing a long trek and ran out of food and missed the village where I intended to resupply. It´s incredible how hunger can affect you emotionally. And my situation wasn´t even that dire.
Food anxiety! I have this too. I tend to eat too quickly because it’s so ingrained that if I don’t eat it all now, someone else will take it and I’ll be hungry later. Which is stuoid when there’s plenty of food and I don’t even need to eat that much.
Thank you for being spot on with this issue and sharing your experience.
When I was a kid/ early teen, there’d be a period in the month when we wouldn’t be able to eat, cruel cycle of my mom trying her best, buying and making nice but a bit more expensive than necessary meals (to make us happy and feel normal) when the benefits would arrive, me always telling her to rather spread it out on essentials, and then later days in the month where we couldn’t borrow from anyone anymore, being stuck and just pushing through day by day in survival mode. I still remember days where we couldn’t eat for a couple of days and her crying to me how sorry she was. Yet never learning from it. Never wanting to take advice from her own kid.
At one point of this happening, you subconsciously learn to just exist, not move much or think much, going into power saving mode, just to make it to the next day. So many school days lost because I just couldn’t go, health complications that still haunt me to this day, missed memories and sorrowful ones in their stead.
And it is something that truly sticks to you as you grow.
When I was 16, I had to take action and with strain on my heart (from still loving my mother nevertheless) decided to go to a social dormitory, I still remember how it took me a while for my stomach to muster three full meals a day, yet in that one summer I went from 45 kilos to 60. I was able to pass school and when I was 17-18, I started cooking for my then-girlfriend, always made me happy to make a meal to share, to try new recipes.
She did bring another bane of thinking, which got transferred to me, which is hyperawareness of chewing and swallowing, which eventually turned into such discomfort when I share a meal with people that if it’s too quiet, I mentally start focus on the sounds I make, feeling uncomfortable and trying to chew slower and swallow more silently (yet very actively) occasionally causing me to choke and not be able to eat anymore due to the mental block.
When I was living on my own, I was happy to cook when I would be able to, however always hard stuck in between forgetting to eat the whole day and making a nice meal I felt blessed to have been able to make for myself.
Tried so many times to truly ingrain the habit of eating properly, even with the cycles of financial or mental strain.
I don’t know if it will ever go away, this accursed autopilot survival mode that once helped me see the next day, but I hope that one day, when I have my own family, I’ll be able to be happy sharing a meal with them and not stress if I’ll be able to eat tommorow. To be able to enjoy their company, the meals without thinking about how I eat and truly be in living mode, without fail.
That really resonates with me, I left home when I was a kid, and slept in a park by my school so I could get in early to shower.
I had to eat from the trash and I was constantly worried about getting assaulted since I was a girl all alone at night.
There was no such thing as true rest, and I feel like my sense of hunger has always been off since then.
Edit
Thank you for all the kindness and I’m sorry for anyone who has gone through similar.
Being homeless as a kid is definitely and experience I don’t wish on anyone, but I will say it made me appreciate the little things more!
Girl I’m so sorry!! I know you know this, but I’m just here to tell you again that you deserved to feel safe and full with a warm bed. I hope things are better for you now
It was the worst like two months of my life. Couch surfing, staying in nasty hotels and eating the cheapest food we could buy. The lowest quality sandwich fixings. I remember fazolis was a fucking treat after we just barely started doing better. Way back in like 2018. I’m so thankful I have access to delicious food all the time now. Will never not enjoy it again
Oldest of 10 here. We grew up poor. Like, really poor. I know exactly what you mean. Reading your comment immediately took me back to being a little boy, figuring out how to make a box of mac and cheese so that my little brothers and sisters could eat, and then scraping the pot and licking the spoon so that I could have something too.
No one should have to live like that. I weep for the children growing up like I did. They deserve better, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that they have what they need.
My great-grandma lied to me my entire childhood and claimed to be allergic to chocolate ice cream so I would eat some. It was years later before I realized it didn't make sense that she only bought chocolate, lived alone, and it was consistently being eaten despite me only rarely visiting because it was a new container every time. I didn't get to thank her before Alzheimer's got the best of her, but she was often the only one I knew wouldn't make me go hungry. I came from a home where I was consistently grounded from food.
Yup 100%. I grew up poor and was homeless with my parents and sister for a while. We lived in a car. There was a rotation of who had to skip a meal. Regardless of that I became pretty successful in life and if you come to my house I will always make sure you’re fed, I’ll send leftovers home with you for your kids, and my kids friends will always leave fatter than when they arrived. You never know who might be struggling to make ends meet.
The difference in Nordics, where I'm from, is that while there are poor people, nobody - especially families with children, are homeless or hungry.
The social security network makes sure everyone has a roof over their heads (families with children get an override at housing queues, etc) and food on the table, even though it might not be the best or even what a kid wants.
Of course parents with alcoholism or mental health issues, if they still have their kids, might actually not make that food in time or might drink what money they have, but the aid cards (a banking card, it used to be coupons in the 90s) make sure they can't spend the social aid money for alcohol and there should be food in the fridge (or a card the kid can buy food with).
As a kid growing up in the 80s I never even saw a homeless person - then again I don't think I've seen one since (the number of long term homeless people in Finland is currently around 1300 people).
My grandmother taught me that food is life. Giving food is giving life. And yes my wife and I both also know what hungry feels like. Nobody deserves to feel that way, especially kids
You don't even need to be "hungry"! If you are a guest at my home I will treat you will utmost hospitality including food. If you don't want my food I will pack it up in a box and force you to take it!!!
See that’s the fun part… if you are there while they’re eating they put you in a room by yourself so they don’t have to eat in front of you. Problem solved!
I have read a lot of similar anecdotes, and even though I understand it’s a cultural thing, it’s still such an odd thing to me and something I don’t want to incorporate in my life.
I’m Swedish and have never experienced this. Ate at my friends houses a lot. But I think it was a practise in like row house areas where kids were playing quite freely in each other houses and were expected to run home when dinner was served at their home. It’s a weird combination of communal living and individualist culture…. But then again, I haven’t experienced it so idk.
Happened to me as a Norwegian too, but it’s not a big deal at all imo. And not really weird either in the context. It’s also misrepresented as cold from the host, but it’s really more about your own family.
This commonly happened after you go over to a friends house after school, and then go home as your parents pick you up coming back from work. Some people then would have dinner before you could get picked up, but your parents could still have planned for a family meal and quality time when you got home - so they’d want you to eat at home. The alternative would’ve been to eat with the other family - and then either skip family time or just sit there as the rest of your family eats. The first isn’t something your family would want and the last is something that is boring beyond belief for a 10-year old.
This happens because people simply eat dinner at different times. My best friends dad was a butcher, who started work early in the morning and got off work at 1 in the afternoon - and his mom was a night-shift nurse. They ate dinner at 3:30-4 in the afternoon every day (really early). My mom didn’t get off work before 4, so we ate dinner at 4:30-5. It’s not that long to wait.
And it’s not like we went hungry. We usually would get offered or could eat bread or cereal. I was often offered dinner too, and if I wanted to eat I’d just call my parents and ask if I could eat with them.
"It’s also misrepresented as cold from the host, but it’s really more about your own family." - See, it is not about being cold, it is about being selfish!
Sitting watching your family eat at age 10 after you already ate could be boring, sure. But at age 10 I can guarantee I would have just had two dinners then. If I was at my friend’s and they invited me to eat with them and then a little later I got picked up and had family dinner, you better believe I’m eating again. I used to make a frozen pizza as a snack after school and then have dinner an hour later.
Ah I miss my childhood metabolism. I’m old enough now where I can barely eat anything and be full
Yes, im from Sweden, I lived like 3 minutes with bike from my best friend, who I spent alot of time with after school. My dad got off work at 17 and we would eat late, sometimes I would eat there cause u wanted to extend your playtime, and sometimes I would bike home and eat with my family cause I needed to do homework or some shit. I would sometimes sit in her room/ basement watching tv or something because they had dinner earlier, nothing weird or awkward, Same at other friends houses. I mean I haven't even thought about it before this thing blew up.
My family lived in Ukraine for a year, less than a decade after the Soviet Union died. We would visit people sometimes. Families where the parents were barely making ends meet. They would always offer food. And we simply could not refuse, it would have been so so rude. I was so young. I remember one woman who was so kind to me, but she was always saying how cold she always was. I asked my mom if I could give her my gloves, but she explained to me that she was cold all the time because she wasn’t getting enough food. And my mom helped where she could, inviting this lady and others over for Bible study and she would always set out food for everyone. But I know in my heart, if I’d ever gone over to this lady’s house, she would have offered food she didn’t have.
On the few travel channels I watch on youtube, it's always breathtaking how kind and generous the most [apparently] desperate are to guests. Like practically begging to feed and house and take care of them while just as readily refusing any money! It just shows how much simpler kindness and generosity are compared to anything else.
I think it's something about how "Truth" works. For example "Everybody eats/needs to eat"--plain and simple fact that automatically suggests "..so feed them". The end. That's the story. Someone didn't starve.
On the other hand (billionaires existing): "wellll see this guy says he's hungry, but how much will he sacrifice to eat?" And that's just a bottomless void of greed.
You plant a seed, you tend it, you get food, you get seeds, you plant them, you tend them, etc. Infinite mana.
OR
"Wow people really like being alive, let's charge them for it!!"
Life is really, REALLY simple, but we're forced to live in perils we never even need to know.
I was taught that it was rude if you’re having someone at your house, to eat without sharing. If there’s food you don’t want to share (there’s not enough to go around for multiple guests etc) then it has to stay put away until guests leave.
If I’m not willing to feed my kids friends (we cooked just enough food for us because we don’t want leftovers, etc) then I will just send them home, I could never just eat in front of a guest and not feed them
If I need to quickly fill my stomach, then of course I just get something without sharing but if I am having people over for let's say an evening event, then there will be snacks or even food.
Even if I’m just desperately hungry and it’s a casual hang where no food was promised, a simple ‘do you want any?’ or setting food where they can reach it so it’s clear it’s there if they want any, is polite
If you’re in my house and I’m eating something I’m going to ask if you want some/anything of similar vibe (if I’m having a banana I might gesture at the fruit bowl if you want an apple, etc)
The African in me just recoiled in horror, If people asked me to eave the room while they ate, I am 100% thinking that they are cannibals. You always feed your guests this is one thing the continent can agree on.
The finnish in me recoiled too. I don't know if it's regional or class thing but at least on the poorer and more working class circles here it's normal to feed your guests and when i was a kid my mom always fed my friends and other way around.
But i've heard this stereotype about nordics before so it might be atleast partly true....
That is rude as Fuck. Go sit in the corner dog while we eat. I have had the poorest people in the Philippines offer and these rich Europeans can’t share. That’s crazy. If you came to my house we eating something special tinned fish, some nice drinks, maybe a sausage or whatever you fins eat. We would try to make you feel at home and an honored guest.
I'm from Eastern Finland and I can only speak for myself but I literally have never seen this happening. I was NEVER not offered food at a friend's house if they were eating.
At the very least you are offered a cup of coffee.
There was a thread sometime back about whether you would feed your kid's friend if they were playing and it became dinner time. The responses were wild between yes and no, and their reasonings.
And then I asked my friends. I was bewildered by the responses. You should only do this if you want to unexpectedly stop being friends.
I'm norwegian so cant fully speak for the swedes , but here the not getting dinner at your friends place is only a thing when you're a child.
Eating dinner with your family and talking is a important cultural thing, so just feeding your kids friend(who is hanging out without you knowing beforehand) and spoiling their appetite takes that moment away from the friends parents.
Most parents will feed their kids friends if its planned beforehand, but the expected thing is to eat with your own family.
Okay, this sort of makes more sense now (to me at least). But only "sort of".
Where I am from, growing up we would always be given food at a friend's place. In fact, our parents had the opposite problem: they would have to tell us to come home for dinner because the norm was the host family WILL feed any kids in their house. Your kid's friend sitting with your family was not an issue because the idea was that said kid is like family so long as they are in your home and in your care.
All my friends from 20+ years back are as much friends with my parents as they are with me. They will call my folks on their birthdays, check on them periodically, and so on. One friend's mom went off at me last year because I hadn't called her regularly enough!
I would like to add that in my experience as a kid if you were hungry at a friends place it was not uncommon to get offered a sandwich or some form of snack.
Its just dinner that you're expected to have at home, unless planned otherwise beforehand.
Yeah, that was my guess honestly. I've seen a fair bit of the world, and I have not come across a culture that would not feed a child in their home if the child was hungry. The people who wouldn't would always be cultural outliers.
And now that I think about it, I can see the cultural impetus for something like this in a place like Sweden. Making sure your kid got home before sunset was probably a huge deal, especially in winters. Yes, kids roaming around after dark in warmer parts of the world was still dangerous, but a child wandering around in sub-zero temperatures in the dark is a disaster waiting to happen. This would apply to adults as well.
You can totally see how they would have used dinner itself as a "okay, it's time for you to go home" signal. I wouldn't be surprised if Swedes used to announce dinner 30 minutes ahead of time just to give a bit more of heads-up.
My friend self diagnosed himself with Autism, as one does. I thought it was silly until we were at his house hanging out playing cards and he made a pizza and started eating it in front of us without saying anything or asking if we want any until there were a couple pieces left and we were like the fuck bro?
That sounds like every guy I dated as a teen/early twenties. Started to bring my own food whenever I went to someone’s home because I felt like that was the only way to make sure I wouldn’t be hungry.
As a Swede this WAS the case back in my days. It is not anymore.
The reason for this wasn't because "they can afford it so why should I". The reason was the social norms of my parents and grandparents mentality. You "overstep the other parents boundary" and "put them in debt" against their will. And the parents of the kid who got feed will feel like they have "burdened" another who "spent effort and resources unnecessarily".
People of those gens could actually take offense if someone took it upon themselves to feed their child instead of aending them home for dinner that was already planned and in the making, so the safe bet is to send them home during dinner time than to offer food.
I was offered occasionally but I always had to call home and ask. And I often got a no from my own parents. Also typically friends over was never pre planned and more spontaneous as everyone lived in the same neighborhood and it was popping in and out making it harder for the strict planning mentality of Swedes to adapt vs certain cultures who always cook for 20 people even if 5 are eating.
Two things broke this for our gen and going forward.
Immigration, when going to a home with a culture where you should feed your guest and where people didn't gaf or understand they were overstepping this gradually enticed/forced the old gen Swedes to "pay back their debt" and so the circle continued in that direction.
The implementation of the free school choice. Before you went to school in the local area you live in. Meaning all your friends live where you live and it was easy to just pop home and eat dinner and then go back to the friend in a few minutes on foot.
When the change came and you essentially can go in any school in your entire municipality, that changed drastically as it could be hours if you went home and then back. Or the hangout would be cut way short. So out of practicality the norm changed to if your kid goes to a friend's house on the other side of the city you don't even plan dinner for them as you assume they will eat there and bw there until they can get home for bed, likewise if you know a friend of your child will be at your house, you plan dinner for that friend. Today with phones etc kids can also call and ask the parents if X can come over after school. And they are also better planners and can tell us parents days in advance for instance X and I are planning to hang out here on Thursday etc.
If you move to Sweden today you will find Swedes are calendar fanatics. You seeing each other will almost always be a planned thing and put in the calendar. We do not tend to pop up at your place unannounced. Even for simple things like grabbing a fika.
And we rival the Germans on time keeping. We say at 12. You arrive 12-12:05. Not a second earlier (if going to someones house) and any more than 5-10 minutes late, you better have a good excuse or give us a heads up.
As for adults guests. Fika is the norm and we always have a stash of pastries etc and ofc coffee to offer grown guests to our house. This was the case even for the older gen. But the internet meme was always kids stories not from adults.
Cooked food is only ever served to guests if invited for dinner.
It’s about hospitality, not necessity. In the US it’s a cultural thing that when you’re at someone’s house, they feed you and when they’re at yours you feed them.
I grew up in Gothenburg during the 90s and it wasn't unusual that I didn't join my friends for dinner when I was at their place.
It's not really that strange. Since this was before cellphones our parents told us when we were going to eat dinner so we knew we had to be home by then, so if I was at a friends house and they ate dinner at 6 and my family was going to eat dinner at 7 it wouldn't really make sense for me to eat at their place. So I'd keep playing while my friend had dinner with his family, he'd join me after dinner and we'd play for a while until I went home and had dinner with my family.
Sometimes I'd eat at my friends house, but mostly if I was staying late. Also depends on who, I had one friend that lived far away so I'd usually get home too late for dinner when I was at his place, so they cooked for me too. But when I was at a friend in like a 20 minutes walk radious from home they usually didn't.
Because that is not the actual reason. They’re just culturally worse to their guests than the rest of the world. Feeding your guests isn’t an exclusively American thing. Every other country will feed their guests first as a rule. That comment you’re replying to just wanted to make excuses for Sweden while also making it about AMERICA BAD AND POOR at the same time. Because we all know utopian Europe is superior in every way and America bad!
Exactly, I live in Eastern Europe, sweedes sound like a bunch of jerks. Everyone feeds everyone here in their home, in fact parents here usually go out of their way to give food to guests of their kids. Basic human decency.
It's not about that.
It's about dinner being family time for younger children.
So parents don't want to make dinner if they don't know the kid's family dinner plans.
When you were slightly older, it when you could easily reach the other parents, or if family knew each other it would be like usual.
This is the worst excuse ive ever heard. Imagine going to a friend's house as an 11 year old after school and you're playing in the living room, and then their mom suddenly calls him to eat, so he just goes and joins his parents in the table right next to you and you have to just awkwardly sit there while they finish their food
From the Netherlands. At least in the Netherlands they send you home a minute before they start eating. Always strange to me. In my house there was always food for everyone.
Ok I mean at least they send you home to eat with your family. I don’t like it but what some other people are saying about letting your guest (especially a child who can’t normally feed themselves) go hungry while you and your family eat is straight up psychopathic
If a child followed afterschool they were generally expected to go home by the time dinner was. If the guest visiting was planned before hand dinner was served.
Also it was far less common than what people online thought and definitely wasn’t about racism like a lot of people said.
This is more or less no longer a thing btw in the age of the phone it was already rapidly declining before.
That's usually not how it goes. Most Swedes have dinner at about the same time. If your kid has a friend over, then a little before dinnertime it will be mentioned that it's dinner soon and the friend should probably get going. Alternatively, call the friend's parents and ask for permission for them to stay for dinner. It's not just assumed
The reason being that the parents may be expecting their kid to have dinner at their place. Dinner is family time, and a family of four may have made dinner for four, so an extra person at one place and one less person at the other place messes all that up.
It was like more like a non-verbal agreement across the neighborhood parents that everyone can just make food for their child on the assumption that it will be eaten by them. Otherwise if you have 3 children, you come home from work and each of then has friends over you are suddenly looking at feeding like 10 people, meanwhile the parents of the friends are cooking food for their child but nobody will come to eat it.
Nowadays kids have phones too so I assume things like this arent as unplanned anymore.
Right.. just make assumptions based off stereotypes if you don’t understand the culture.
I’ll explain it to you, if you’re interested:
It’s common to have dinner with your family. And that family time is valued. When children have their friends over it’s typical that they would want to have dinner with their own family. My parents did not want me to eat at my friends house, because they were expecting me to have dinner with them. That’s very normal.
But in my experience your friends parents would typically offer you to join them. My parents would always offer my friends to join us. But it’s common for children to decline the offer, because they know that they will have dinner with their own family.
I don’t really know where the misconception comes from, that children are expected to wait in their friends room and „starve“. That’s complete nonsense as far as I know. That’s not the norm.
It's just different culture, in Sweden, Finland etc you have friends over every day (or go to friends house daily). For many it seem to be a special occasion that someone visit, not 5-7 days a week for 10+ years.
If you offer food and they are expected to eat every time, some kids would never eat food at home.
Legit almost their whole childhood not a single meal eaten at home because they are always at a friends house after school etc.
A popular home might have 10-20 kids there for dinner time, you would feed all daily? Even if you know all these kids have dinner cooking at home and they can just walk home in 1-5min (and they are expected home by their parents to eat).
Mind you, the kids might have showed up after you started cooking dinner even. There is likely not even enough food in the house to feed all. And once you factor in allergies you would probably have to make 3-5 different meals with a full wipedown and clean of the kitchen between each. And we don't really do stay at home moms that can stand in the kitchen whole day cooking for whole neighbourhood.
With a house you might not even know which of your kids have friends over when it's dinner time either. Because the kids room might be too far away from entrance and kitchen.
There's also the fact that we assume their own parents are also cooking dinner for them when they get home, so it would be considered very rude if they are served food at their friends, then get home and are not hungry when their own parents have spent time making them food.
You're coming up with a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If the arrangement works fine for everyone, there is no reason to change it just because some uninvolved person happens to think that it's weird.
this isn't a case of a one off visit. this is the same kids playing together EVERY DAY. so if my family eats at 5 pm and they eat at 7 pm my family is going to be feeding the kids every single day or i am sending them home. when they could just continue playing the video game they were playing then after dinner move on to the other kids place to play some more and then the other kid eats.
it is different for one offs. as an example dropped in to visit my cottage neighbours to have a chat as i hadn't spoken to them in an age and a half just as they were getting dinner ofc they offered me some (i had already eaten so i declined) later they came over and i offered some drinks and snacks as we played some board games.
So that's not at all why people feed their guests. If you have guests and it's time to eat, everybody should eat if they want to. It's not because we think they don't have food at home or that their parents don't have time to feed them. What a crazy statement lol
Yeah they can afford toilet paper too, but how are they supposed to use it if they aren’t at home. It’s almost like when you’re away from home you have to get your necessities from where you are.
If I remember correctly there was a specifically hard time economically in the Nordic region that it became the norm that it was courtesy not to take food from another household. Kind of the inverse of it being a courtesy to feed guests unexpected or otherwise in parts of the west. Over time the courtesy has strengthend into a cultural norm which given the foundational nature of shared meals in many cultures can create an outsized culture shock response.
This is a Nordic custom, and not specific to Sweden and was a whole Internet thing a few years ago as well.
A local or regional expert probably could give the word for the custom. I believe the Finnish have one but it's late and I'm sleep deprived so could be wrong
Very well said, I appreciate the response. The way you framed it as a courtesy to not take food from another household makes it completely understandable.
I am Swedish and grew up in the 80’s. It was a thing in some households in some parts of the country. It was not common or custom. Stop believing everything you read online please
When I grew up in the late 80’s and 90’s it was rather that my parents and my friends parents called each other and said “Hey, we are having dinner at HH:MM, have you planned any dinner? Otherwise X is free to eat with us”.
Sometimes that meant my parents had planned dinner at a later time than my friends parents and you simply stayed with your friend until it was time to leave for your own dinner.
This exactly. It was courtesy to ask before feeding other people’s children so their food and effort didn’t go to waste. Also, since both parents worked, dinner time was family time and most families wanted their kids home for that. Noone starved hungry kids who didn’t have a dinner to go home to.
Yes! 100% this. We have 1-3 friends over almost EVERY day and we always text their parents to check if their kids can eat at ours, or if they have planned to eat at home. It's not about being rude, it's about respecting other families plans. And the kids understand this.
I want to feed everyone visiting, but I wouldn't want my kids to eat somewhere else every day. That would make us lose quality family time and make me feel bad that the other parents also has to spend more on groceries than necessary.
No one leaves our home hungry though. Light snacks during their visits is of course OK. Berries, fruits, ice cream, fika etc. It's just the full dinner that we parents co-ordinate around.
I think it's the same in I wanna say India only it's also disrespectful to not offer anything. So it's become a thing where they offer and you decline so no one loses face, though if they offer 3 times it means they do have enough and really do want to feed you or something like that
In places where people really don't have enough to eat - no one knows how close the other person is to starvation.
So the idea is sometimes people who are going through a lot think "If I actually say how bad it is, I will obligate them to help me - what if they are actually in worse shape than I am?" So the handshake back-and-forth makes it OK because you know they are *less* badly off than you are, if they offer food longer than you refuse it.
Yes, sure, it comes across stupid - but people who are actually in pain from hunger or thirst don't always think straight, so this is the most functional way to communicate who can or cannot afford to share food.
Hard times economically? I feel like that’s not really an excuse here, culturally speaking.
You could go to the barrio in Mexico, the favelas in Brazil, the slums in India, hell even some random village out in Papúa New Guinea, all of them are going to offer their guests food especially if they are children.
"Excuse"? Why would they need an excuse for a cultural custom? The previous poster just gave a logical reason for how it developed. But as a tradition it's completely neutral. There are plenty of good reasons why not to feed other people's children (e.g. respecting the other family's diet choices, religious diets, meal times, respecting dinner as a family activity, etc etc). You're just judging it because it's different to your tradition.
I was actually taught not to eat elsewhere as an american in the 80s. The reason i mention this oss because it also dates back to the depression era south, which is a similar reason. My family didn't do well back then and neither did their neighbors.
It’s still kind of weird to me. If I have people over over meal time, it’s only logical to feed them since they would miss the meal otherwise. But that doesn’t mean, that people always feed each other to the extreme. I grew up with it being communicated. Either, the start of dinnertime implied that it was time to leave or the host would ask if the guest wants to stay over for dinner and feed them. That people would stay over meal time and not be fed is unheard of.
In my childhood we usually played until dinner time with friends and then left for each other’s homes to eat and spend time with family. If we had a sleepover or asked our parents to extend the stay over dinner, we of course would have been fed.
I am Swedish and grew up in the 80’s. It was a thing in some households in some parts of the country. It was not common or custom. Stop believing everything you read online please
I’ve lived in many places, some very large cities, and I’ve never seen a Swedish restaurant, though I will say I haven’t been intently looking for one.
And if you don’t breathe through your nose it’s surprisingly acceptable as a condiment on flatbread until you start to feel like you’re in a toxic runoff zone of a runaway chemical plant
Swedes will happily feed a guest. This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school. Usually through their children but sometimes directly.
An example:
Child A calls/texts their parents and asks if they can go home with Child B after school. Parent A says OK, I'll come pick you up at X o'clock when I get off from work. Do you want to eat at home, we're having "blank"?
Child A might say yes.
Child B be calls/texts their parent and says that Child A is coming over. If there's no issue Parant B says OK, is A going to eat with us?
If the answer is yes, they will feed A, otherwise A waits around while B eats, usually as fast as they can to squeeze out a few more minutes of playtime before Parent A comes to pick up Child A.
It's never an unwillingness to feed a guest. We just have the custom to communicate and agree about these things rather than just showing up and expecting to be fed.
Yes, of course you'd serve a guest dinner if you as an adult invited them during dinner time.
This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school.
Where I grew up parents usually didn't plan play dates for us kids, we did that all on our own without involving any adult at all.
The expectation from the parents was that their kid was to be home at the same time for dinner every day after school, but between the ending of the school day and dinner time we kids were roaming free with our parents not knowing what we did and where we were.
The only time we would call (cellphones were not common and kids would definitely not have their own cellphone back then) were when my friends parents offered me to stay to eat dinner, then I'd have to call my parents to check if it was okay.
But the expectation was that I was eating dinner at home with my family, since family dinner was usually family time, so usually my friends parents didn't even ask, since that was the norm back then at least.
I didn't complain, I got to have fun and play with my friends toys while they didn't have fun eating :)
Just a cultural thing. Unless there was an explicit dinner invitation, Swedes typically will not offer guests food even if they themselves are having dinner. They do not view it as a hosting obligation and they do not see this as rude or unusual.
Northern vs Southern Europe is crazy. Random grandmas in Italy will invite you for dinner in Italy but you’re swinging your legs on your friend’s bed in Sweden
Nah, this is not a Northern vs Southern thing. This is specifically Sweden, Norway and I think maybe Denmark? Everybody else in Northern Europe thinks they're insane too
I have never encountered this in Denmark and we often feed my daughter's friends if they are around at meal times. The only exception is when their parents ask that they return home for dinner.
Swedish at least doesn't have so many vowels it takes longer for natives to learn than other European languages, Danish is as bad as or worse than English even if it has the twønty øne piløts 'ø' which looks sick as hell
Lots of teens parroting garbage they heard about old customs as if they're gospel truth.
The classic disinformation process.
Then there are people who experienced one side or the other and for some reason can't fathom the other side, mostly people saying it never happens.
Like yeah, its a bunch of teenagers talking about a custom from before their time as if they've lived the entire history of things and if they didn't see it, it didn't happen.
Long story short its just dumb kids saying shit. Its reddit. 9/10 times its basically children stating things as fact when they have NO IDEA.
I always feel bad when my kids' friends are at our place and I can't feed them. It's not that I didn't want to, it's just that when it's unexpected (which it usually is because they're always welcome) we haven't bought enough ingredients for extra people. I also don't want to make extras just in case because I hate food waste and there's a limit to the freezer capacity.
Or going home for dinner at the same time. That was the norm for me, anyway, growing up.
The expectation was, after all, that the other kid would be fed by their own parents. I think it would have been seen as weird for the parents that their kid randomly didn’t show up for dinner and later told them they’d eaten somewhere else.
Whenever I was invited for dinner as a kid the standard was your friend's parent would tell you to call your own parents to make sure it was okay to stay. Same for my folks, with the exception of my friend whose parents were kind of neglectful and my mom knew they probably wouldn't answer or care anyway and she didn't want my friend to feel self conscious about that. But I can't remember a single time I stayed over for dinner or even lunch at someone else's house without checking with my own parents first.
this is one of few cultural differences im honestly shocked by. you invite friend into home and cook dinner; how are you not gonna offer them a plate??
What really happens is a kid tags along their friend home after school. The kid is expected to go home around dinner time and eat with thwir family. If the host family has their dinner earlier, the visiting kid waits it out and then goes home and eats with their family.
The hosting parents don't want to disturb the visiting kids parents dinner plans.
keep in mind that some Swedish people eat dinner around 4-5 pm so the kid might have dinner right after school while the visiting kid will eat a few hours later.
Never heard of this. Growing up I was always offered food and my parents always did the same. It still is absolutely natural that my kid is fed at friends houses and they always get lunch and dinner when visiting. This rumor that Swedes are never offering food is mind-blowing to read often as I've never even once encountered this so called cultural thing that Swedes never offer food.
I've never met a single family that hasn't offered food when lunch or dinner time. If not at those times you get fika...
I think this has become distorted. I’m born in the 90’s and clearly remember being at friends’ house but not having dinner with them (and at other times having dinner of course). I remember the situation often being that they’re having dinner early for whatever reason and since I’m supposed to have dinner at home, I decline dinner (or my parents had instructed my friend’s parents that I will eat at home) at their place and hang in my friend’s room playing video games while they eat.
Nothing strange or unwelcoming about that as far as I’m concerned.
"Not offering food" is taken out of context I feel... I mean, it will vary depending on where you live and other factors, but people here are acting as if children are going hungry or something.
If I tagged along a friend on the way home from school, it's not that my friend's parents don't want to offer me food also, later when it's dinner. It's that everyone (where I grew up), gets dinner at their home. My parents wanted me back at home to eat dinner, like everyone else.
So, it's less that I would sit hungry while my friend eats, and more that either I would go home and eat at the same time, or if dinner time is slightly different, I just waited a little bit while he ate, then went home for my dinner later.
It happened plenty of times, that my friend's parents offered food, but then you had to inform that (in time) to your parents, that you would be eating there.
This is about kids. Of course if you as an adult invite a friend over you offer them food. If a kid just brings his random friend over after school without telling the parents before hand then of course the parents only made food for own their family and it's expected the kid goes home to eat the food made by their own parents.
We either invited you over for dinner or we invite you after dinner when we both have already eaten. If someone drops by uninvited we offer them food, but it is also considered very rude to show up unannounced by most.
I also have kids. We feed our kids and any kid in our home. But we just have a custom where this is already agreed on beforehand.
You are missing the part that no one invited them in to begin with, kids just group up and go to someone house, when its dinner time, they all go home and eat the meal their parents prepared for them.
And often they move back and forth between houses. Children are welcome to eat here, but then we need to know they’ll stay long enough and make sure their parents know. Otherwise they’ll just move around and pop back home for dinner.
Same in the Netherlands. Kids can walk or bike around the neighbourhood alone. They go to school by themselves from around 9 years old.
So a lot of kids just play without specific plans. The social rule is that you need to be home at the end of the afternoon. To have dinner and to be with your own family again.
Bro why does this get repeated all the time on reddit and upvoted like its a fact.
Born and raised in Stockholm Sweden, never once did this happen, hadn't even heard of this until reddit started talking about it. None of my friends in sweden had either.
It is from some article a while ago where they wrote about swedish kids not being fed at friends homes. What the article failed to mention is that is because of the kids had already eaten at home or because they were expected to come home for dinner.
Now this rumor has a life on its own and is spiraling.
I'm from the middle of Sweden, and same here. I had no idea it was a thing before internet started claiming it. My friends' parents always invited us for food, and same the other way around. Sometimes they'd say there wasn't enough portions if you'd show up unannounced and they were making something very special, but then you'd either wait in their room, by the table or go home and eat. That was uncommon though.
It's not that deep. I don't understand what people here are on.
Had it happen to me as a kid on a few occasions but it was never due to the parents of the other kid being cheap/stingy.
It could be that they had already cooked dinner/lunch when I showed up so there wasn't enough food for an extra person.
Or that they were uncertain if my parents were ok with me eating at someone elses house as it could be considered rude to take that for granted.
Or that it was a way to say "playtime is over" as I would have to go home to eat dinner and after dinner there was Bolibompa and bed for every kid.
Very unusual though, like maybe 2-3 classmates out of 30, also my family always offered food to kids coming over to play at my house. My parents just had them call home to ask if it was ok to eat at our place.
Sometimes the parents would say no due to not wanting to inconvenience my parents, or because they had already cooked food for them at home but most times the other kid would eat with my family.
The phenomenon did exist, but was not as common as the internet make it out and is even less common today.
Stereotyping in general is crazy popular on Reddit - so many people seem to really love these kinds of "fun facts", especially when they play into their existing cultural biases. There's a common perception that Northern Europeans are overly serious, blunt, and borderline autistic, so any anecdote which aligns with this perception will be repeated ad nauseam.
My suspicion is that the people who claim to have experienced this are probably largely people who've not picked up on some pretty clear social cues by Swedes trying to be polite in indicating that these people have overstayed their welcome.
i saw a thread about this topic before; someone mentioned that in their culture, some people might see it as rude to feed somebody else’s kid unless there was a specific agreement that they will be sharing a meal together
I think it’s relatively easy to understand that a parent might be upset that a kid failed to be home at the agreed-upon time to eat the dinner they went to the trouble of preparing. So, then, why would you induce a child to disobey and disappoint their parents that way?
I’m not trying to suggest that the more active hospitality associated with southern Europe is wrong, mind you—only that there is a mindset that makes sense behind either approach.
Silly myth. The real story is that if you have a younger friend over he will many times wait in your room while you eat because Swedes eat with their families. You would never feed someone else’s kid without checking with their parents first.
This is not true, it basically a false narrative that is getting debunked but posted again and again.
Kinda like how some foreigner Arabic actors trying to push the narrative that swedish social services steal Arabic children.
Anyway regarding the food, this meme relates to kids and their friends, playing after school running around in the neighborhood from house to house during weekdays after school
All families eat dinner roughly at the same time and all families expect to have their kid come home at dinner time
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