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High school Norwegian here, I try to bring "matpakke" every day to school, and often I don't have the time - though really I just don't take the time - or ingredients to put together a very good meal, but of course, it'd be much better to have a great lunch!

- "... it should be a disappointment." No ... it shouldn't.

- "First, the base must consist of boring brown bread; custom dictates that only the highly processed supermarket kind will do," What? I'm shocked, while it's true that it's very common to use supermarket bread, it's an absolutely ridiculous statement to say that it must do so... I mean, why?

- "It’s also taboo to add salad or slices of delectable cured meat," Nope.

- etc.

Absolutely agree the article contains some bullshit.

It's particularly ridiculous to talk about "highly processed supermarket kind" in a BBC article. I'm Norwegian. I live in the UK. Hardly a week goes by when I don't miss Norwegian supermarket bread - to get bread of that quality in the UK you mostly need to take time to go to a proper baker, and finding decent bakers (no, to anyone from the UK, Greggs is not a baker by any reasonable standard) in the UK is hard many places.

It's common to use supermarket bread in Norway because supermarket bread in Norway is nowhere like the "highly processed supermarket kind" you can typically expect in the UK.

And, frankly, what is generally a disappointment to me is when I for whatever reason doesn't have any alternative but the ubiquitous pre-made sandwich packs from UK supermarkets, that people here seems to accept as decent sandwiches. The bread is usually bland and awful, and they manage to make all kinds of combinations of nice ingredients into a stereotype of why British cuisine has a poor reputation.

“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“

I am a non Norwegian living in Norway. I can confirm that it is almost all the time disappointing. Also it is a strange practice to have short lunch breaks. When I was in Germany 1 hour lunch break was common. But in Norway 30 minutes is more common. It is too short even with a matpakke. It’s too rushed when it is an organized lunch say for a workshop or a conference.

Italian here. We have 1-hour lunch breaks between 13:00 and 14:00, which is usually long enough to eat our meals, have a cup of coffee and mess around a little with colleagues.

Sometimes (but very rarely) my colleagues from my team and me go have lunch at some fancier place and completely miss the 1-hour time limit (by a lot).

This is kinda tolerated because it happens very rarely, but I can assure that this is awesome for team building. Nothing gets people closer than "we took a 2.5h lunch break and we're all equally responsible for it".

I understand that teachers in France used to be able to order a pitcher of wine at the cafeteria as well.

The cafeteria of the place where I went to grad school in Paris still serves wine. I also know of at least one research institution in the US that serves wine at the cafeteria.

You remind me of a business trip to Italy some 25 years ago, when I visited a factory outside Florence and was shocked to see small bottles of wine served in the employee lunchroom for the mid-day meal. I don't know if this practice is still common in Italy or other parts of Europe, but the thing that amazed me was that the plant was industrial, and most of the employees left the lunchroom and went back to operating moving machinery.

It used to be much more commonplace in the US to have alcohol at business lunches than it now is. But, even at that time, the company I was working for at the time had very strict rules prohibiting alcohol in an industrial setting--and, indeed, on company property more broadly.

GDP per capita from the IMF, 2017:

Norway: $70,590

Italy: $37,970

I doubt the difference is much from longer Italian lunches, but the same cultural differences may well be responsible for both longer lunches and lower productivity.

Norwegian oil has a lot to do with this too.

Sweden would be a better comparison, with a GDP per capita of $53,442, which is about 50% higher than Italy's. Sweden is culturally very similar to Norway.

I have no doubt that certain cultural aspects of Southern Europe have a huge impact on their countries' GDP, long lunches and a more relaxed attitude towards labor (not to mention taxes and corruption!) among them. In Scandinavia, the Protestant work ethic is still deeply ingrained in the culture, and this shows.

Do you think the Protestant work ethic can be beneficial to an individual ? Or does it work only on a larger scale ?

Ah, sorry for the late reply here. This actually touches on something I've been thinking about recently. It's probably got its advantages and disadvantages on an individual level. You'd most likely be regarded as an attractive worker, but would at the same time have to be careful not to get taken advantage of. I think many who have this work ethic fall into the trap of the latter point, and that this is systematically abused some places. E.g. Scandinavia, where people pay _massive_ amounts of tax and at the same time voluntarily work unpaid overtime for low-pay public-sector jobs such as nursing, in a misunderstood loyalty to their patients.

And it necessarily leaves less time and space for non-work-related activities. So it meshes poorly with hedonism. But happiness can certainly come from fitting in with a role and excelling at something.

Corruption too. And off the books businesses. (Which perhaps underpform, and definitely are undermeasured)

I wonder what would be Norway economically today without it’s oil. More like Iceland may be.

Iceland is a tough comparison due to a disproportionately large financial sector relative to population. Perhaps Sweden or Denmark would be closer?

I’ve never been to Scandinavia. All this talk makes me want to visit.

I deliberately didn’t compare to Sweden and Denmark because historically they are more technologically advanced they have achieved similar quality of living without oil (no offense to Norway). Norway on the other hand was a country of farmers and fishermen. Not much technological or industrial progress before the oil boom. Which is why I compared it to Iceland.

And possibly IQ too . There is a high correlation between national IQ and GDP per capita.

The average IQ of Italy and Norway is practically the same.

High correlation is not the same as perfect correlation https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IQatWoN_GDP_IQ.png

Isn't it pretty widely accepted that your IQ, at least as measured by IQ tests, aren't a perfect measure of your "intrinsic" intelligence; that environmental factors contribute to IQ test results?

If environmental factors do indeed contribute to IQ scores, doesn't it seem pretty plausible that lower GDP per capita, which results in changes to environmental factors such as education, might result in lower IQ scores, rather than the other way around?

It'd be interesting to read studies which investigate whether there's a causal link between IQ and GDP per capita, and if there is one, which one causes the other.

Maybe high IQ people move to areas with a lot of oil?

how about South Korea

Life expectancy from the World Bank, 2016:

Norway: 82.51

Italy: 82.54

I doubt the difference is much from longer Italian lunches, but the same cultural differences may well be responsible for both longer lunches and higher life expectancy.

Why is it disappointing? Didn't you pack it yourself? Norwegians make the matpakke they want to eat. (Source: Am Norwegian.)

Grabbing a dish of leftovers from the fridge that needs to be re-heated and then cleaning the dish seems like it will rob 10-20% of the limited time.

Would colleagues be offended in any way if your dish was particularly aromatic once reheated?

No. Norwegian love Indian food, for example, and there are several popular Scandinavian foods that are a bit smelly.

Most people don't bring leftovers, though. They typically pack open sandwiches that they make themselves.

A lot of companies have kitchen areas that they keep stocked. People typically make sandwiches (open, again!) and salads. I've never seen anyone hear anything in a microwave.

Lets start with variety-pricing that EU gets and get it into NOR food stores, then we will talk rest.

At least the office I work in, nobody would care if you took an hour for lunch as long as you're getting your work done. And nobody is watching to see if you're putting in more or less than your 37.5 hours/week unless they think you're not doing your share of the work.

The quotes by Ronald Sagatun read like self-deprecating satire. It seems that the BBC are either clueless or in on it. In any case this should not be taken too literally.

As long as there's no lutefisk on crispbread. ;P

I lived with some Norwegians and hung out with YSC in the Bay Area. I'm not more than 10% Scandinavian, if that.

Packing a lunch can be wise, if it's worth your or someone else's time. I spent over $25k/yr dining out for lunch and dinner in my year of maximum unfrugality. :'( Don't do as I did, save money where it balances pennywise (not wasting time saving pennies) and poundwise (not wasting tons of money). At least prepared food from a grocery store rather than a restaurant, meal kit service or restaurant meal delivery service. Take advantage of healthy free or low/er cost food nearby when available. If you're a VC or CEO and raking in coin, pay (almost) any amount to automate everything. If you're broke, automate gradually as you get less broke.

Back to article topic: When I was a kid, every day was a sizable packed lunch from home at school. Had to get to 2 m and 80 kg somehow, as I was two-dimensional until university.

I can think of less than 5 people I've known in my office over the past 10 years who have brought food from home. Those that have did so due to specific diets or dietary requirements, or to save money (although our lunch deduction is less than $100/month, and it's pretty hard to eat lunch more cheaply than that in Norway).

I've also never seen anyone open a matpakke on public transport here in Norway.

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?

The established tradition of bringing a homemade meal packed in a bag means that nobody has really been clamouring for cafeteria service -- everyone has simply accepted that schools don't provide food, and so people don't look to schools to provide a service that they don't view as being part of the school system.

Better income equality also means that everyone can afford to provide their own lunches.

Note that some Norwegian schools, especially bigger ones in the larger cities, now provide hot lunches, but the practice is fairly new and still uncommon.

(Source: Am Norwegian.)

Where are you from? There are many places where warm lunches in school are not normal. (I'm specifically thinking about Belgium and the Netherlands here, but I don't think they're common anywhere in Europe outside of the UK). It's mostly a cost thing, I think.

Wait, I'll google this...

Ah, here it goes: warm lunches: Finland, Spain, Denmark(?), Estonia, Lithuania, France, Italy, Sweden, UK, potentially others, not a complete list. [1]

p.s. Fun fact: Norwegian school lunches were supplied from Sweden during World War II, partly privately financed. Later, all public school lunches were discontinued, so most Norwegian students bring a packed lunch from home.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_meal

I don't think that list is really as black and white as that article makes it seem. I had conversations about this exact topic with friends from Spain and France (the things you talk about once you have children), and none of them had warm lunches at school. Of course I'm almost 40 years old, my friend are in that age bracket, so maybe it's different now, or maybe it depends on rural/urban or how well funded the schools are in other ways - but from what I understand, without it being a statistically sound survey, having full meals at primary and/or secondary school is not universal.

I have personally seen warm lunches in France in 3 out of three schools I visited. Locals treated it as something completely normal, complained about quality which seemed to me much higher then what I was used to.

I'm pretty sure that's outdated for Spain. According to various news reports (in Spanish), schools serve warm lunches, with most receiving pre-cooked food and heating it locally, while about 1/3 have full kitchens on premises.

I heard that warm lunches used to be common in Netherland in agricultural areas. They'd work in the field all morning, then have a hot meal, then work all afternoon, and have some bread in the evening.

With everybody working/going to school outside the home, the family dinner moved to the evening and people took sandwiches with them for lunch.

Germany too.

And Portugal.

Here in Albania (Europe) it's still a lifestyle thing - school is done by 1pm and lunch is taken at leisure with pleasure. It's a real joy.

I always had the option of warm lunch in school in Belgium (Hainaut, not really a rich part), maybe it's a regional thing.

I had warm lunch in high school (Norway, 1997). Granted, it was a private school.

Where are warm lunches for schools typical/expected? Have never seen them "properly".

In the US, it's the norm. When I was in elementary (primary in the UK) school, it was split about half between packed sandwiches (with a box of OJ and a small bag of chips or similar snack) and queuing up at the school's lunch counter for a hot meal (usually cheap, not great quality, and heavily subsidized for those students that qualified). I'm not sure when it started, but my guess would be the 1930s, in an effort to ensure every child had at least one full meal a day. And at least in my current region, the school now offers breakfast before school begins (though this is almost exclusively used by students who qualify for free lunches - I don't know any middle-class families that rely on the school breakfast).

From what I know, the food quality and cost varies widely. Here (rural Minnesota, US) the elementary school lunch is about $2.50 (HS is about $3.75) for the kids who don't qualify for financial aid or free meals. Breakfast is also available at a similar cost.

I've never eaten it, but my kids generally enjoy the food and my wife, who's volunteered at the school often and eaten lunch there, says it's OK. They also offer an optional PM snack in elementary school at additional cost. Snack milk is free for everyone.

OTOH, I've heard of other school districts around the country where the food is total crap and only the poorest children who can't afford to have breakfast at home/bring a lunch will eat it.

Ours was hit or miss. The pizza was good, if you like a greasy thin slice (I do). Simple things like Mac & cheese were good too. The meatloaf was terrible. The hamburgers weren’t great - the patties were cheap meat (possibly with lots of filler) and the buns mediocre. My fav was the thanksgiving lunch - they did a pretty good turkey, stuffing, and gravy.

The real problem was vegetables - they were guaranteed to be over cooked and mushy.

I don't know the entire history but as a federal program it started in 1946. [1] It's long been sort of a political hot button. As you say, the impetus was (and is) that children from poor or otherwise disadvantaged home environments got at least one full meal at lunchtime.

[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program-...

I grew up in the US Midwest, and I'm pretty sure it was a norm throughout the region, if not the entire country. So far as I know every school had a hot lunch, and also a hot breakfast. As I understand it, the rationale was that there were in fact kids who came to school hungry, and that it interfered with their ability to learn. At the same time, the lunch was available to everybody, and payment was handled in a way so that the kids never knew who was getting it for free. The teacher would collect lunch money in the morning. I brought a nickel every day for milk.

(This is where the idea of the school bully demanding your lunch money came from. Today, lunch money is handled through some sort of payment system, and the kids don't have to handle their own lunch money or have it stolen from them).

Of course there is no such thing as a single purpose government program. The state bought the milk from farmers, effectively subsidizing it. And so forth.

I never understood the magic of why the meal had to be hot. Usually the food was vile, and I greatly preferred to bring a sandwich from home. I wondered why the cafeteria couldn't just make a nice sandwich for everybody. Perhaps there was a time when heating institutional food was the best way of making sure everything was sanitary.

Even to this day, I bring a sandwich or leftovers from home. My daughter just left for college, so her supper portion goes in my lunch bag for the next day. ;-) My employer has a cafeteria, but maybe only 1/4 of the employees use it. The rest bring bag lunches. The cafeteria and break rooms have microwaves for us to use.

This may be a regional thing. In the Midwest, eating prepared food every day will kill you.

hot lunch was a thing when I was growing up. Same as everybody else from the US in this thread- about $1-2, cheap greasy pizza and tater tots.

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.

In fact in Norwegian companies over a certain size (forget the number of employees), it is a legal requirement for there to be a cafeteria provided by the employer.

"Maadpukke" is correct. Try reading "matpakke" in English and it will sound like "mætpæk". You need to change it to "aa" and "u" for it to sound Norwegian when reading it like English.

Norwegian here. No -- there's no "d" sound in matpakke, and neither "a" corresponds to the English "u" sound.

If I were to transliteralize it, it would be something like "maht-pahkk-eh". First ah is long, second is short. The "t" is distinct, as in "mat".

Note that in Danish (madpakke) it would be a soft "d", but all the other sounds would be quite different, despite the similar spelling.

I think the 'aa' and 'u' in their transliteration have the same role as the 'ah' in yours, but a lot of native english speakers don't read 'ah' as the open A you expect. As a non-native speaker of either language, `maadpukke` looks like the one that will get the closest-sounding result (either with D or T, try it in google translate).

No, English "u" (as in under, burn, us) is not correct here.

Both "a" sounds in "matpakke" have the same pronunciation. The closest you get to Norwegian "a" in "typical" American English is the "o" in "hot". Or indeed just "ah" (as in the exclamation; "ah" or "a-ha" or "ha"). In English, "a" (as in "hat" or "ask") is very different.

The 'u' in this configuration is voiced somewhere in between the 'ʌ' and 'ə' phonetic sounds. 'Pah-keh' will be read as 'paki' very often. I guess asking some native english speakers around you to read both will resolve the matter :)

"Eh" is pseudo-phonetic for the e in "lend" (IPA ɛ), not as in "he" (i). It's also worth nothing that in Norwegian, a double consonant indicates a short preceding vowel.

FWIW, my comments were vetted by my American girlfriend, who's sitting next to me. :-)

> as in under, burn, us

No, think "duck". That would be "dack" in Norwegian.

What dialect of English do you speak? American English "duck" is IPA /dʌck/, same vowel as "us" /ʌs/, for example. The "a" sound is IPA /a/, as in "far".

The "u" in "duck" sounds the same as our letter "ø", and nowhere near our "a". The english "duck" would be "døck" (or "døkk", since we usually don't use "ck") in norwegian, not "dack".

For "burn" it would be "børn" but the pronunciation of "u" in "duck" is different.