Lördagsgodis (Saturday Sweets) | Hacker News Reader

Lördagsgodis (Saturday Sweets)

en.wikipedia.org

32 pointsdmichulke47 comments

The intention was to prevent tooth decay by regulating candy intake. But it turns out that mandating a special weekly(!) day for candy consumption had the opposite effect. Children are naturally interested in things that are forbidden from them, and so when the restrictions are lifted they tend to eat large amounts of candy. Furthermore, restrictions and rules are not a good way of teaching moderation. Practices like Saturday candy facilitate an unhealthy relationship with food, which is why it's not longer a recommendation in Finland -- I'm not sure about the other Nordics.

"Lørdagsgodteri" here in Norway was always restricted though. I read your comment as if kids have unlimited access to candy, which I have never heard of. The idea is that the parents give the kids the amount of candy allowed, and they only do that in saturdays.

Right? When I was a child growing up in Norway, we went to the kiosk on Saturdays to buy my lørdagsgodteri and I was given a very specific small amount of money to buy a couple of hectograms of candy for or thereabouts.

Children are naturally interested in sweets! You don't need to make them forbidden for that. And just you are allowed to eat sweets only one day of the week doesn't mean that they are allowed to unlimited amounts of it, and, in my experience, interested to overeat it.

Why would it foster an unhealthy relationship with food to learn that some things are unhealthy and eaten only at special occasions? An unhealthy relationship with food would rather be to think that you can eat sweets whenever you feel for it.

My limited experience seems to suggest the same thing the op wrote.

The more your hide something from kids, the more they crave it.

If there is no limit, they will eventually get bored of it.

I guess that's why American kids never eat junk food or drink soda instead of water. I'm sure the 35% of the US population that are obese will get tired of eating badly any day now.

> The intention was to prevent tooth decay by regulating candy intake.

Yes, but crucially not by reducing candy intake.

The result of the study was that the amount of sugar didn't particularly matter, but frequency of intake and stickiness did.

My wife once asked a friend from England what they have "instead of lördagsgodis".

The reply? "Obese kids".

Here is an article in Norwegian that goes a bit deeper into the grotesque history behind the tradition of saturday sweets:

https://www.nrk.no/kultur/xl/lordagsgodt-er-typisk-norsk-og-...

You mean the grotesque experiments that lead to the scientific knowledge that in turn lead to lördagsgodis. The distinction is pretty important.

Here's an article in english about the experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipeholm_experiments

Iceland has this too, Laugardagsnammi :)

Go to Hagkaup or Samkaup on a Saturday (or just after midnight on Friday night, where you'll usually bump into a gaggle of teenagers in their pajama bottoms, out on a candy run) and get yourself a massive bag of pick'n'mix for half price. It's one of the few things I miss about Iceland.

the pick n mix bars can get pretty huge: https://yummy-iceland.blogspot.com/2025/06/nammidagur.html

I remember as a kid, I'd get 100 kronur (probably about $3 USD in today's money) on Saturday morning and go to the store to buy sweets. You'd meticulously choose which items to put in the bag to make sure you got the best value for money :)

The same concept exists in Danish (lørdagsslik), and I had no idea it had such a dark history. 1959 is surprisingly recent for conducting medical experiments on people without their informed consent - one of the most horrifying things imaginable, in my opinion.

I can highly recommend the radio documentary https://www.sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/vipeholmsanstalten-min-... it's horrifying (in Swedish of course but hopefully more understandable to a Dane than Danish [to my own detriment and sorrow] is to us Swedes).

Thanks, I’ll check it out!

And don’t worry - the secret is to just spend a few hours actually trying with native speakers, and ideally some beers, and suddenly it will click. It goes both ways, and only takes a tiny bit of practice in my experience. :-)

I have lived in several parts of Denmark and never once encountered the notion of "lørdagsslik"; that concept sounds completely absurd and laughable. No, in every place I have stayed, kids would only ever have fredagsslik (Friday goodies), to be consumed while watching FredagsTamTam (https://www.dr.dk/drtv/serie/fredagstamtam_357146).

I think it moved to Friday some time in the 90s.

Big in denmark too. My parents always used it as a way to regulate our candy-intake, by postponing all candy until the weekend, so i’m surprised to read the intention was sort of the opposite.

I’d also note that Scandinavia is big on “hygge” and being home (unlike countries with warmer climates) and weekend snacks and sweets are an obvious way to make the experience comfy.

Interesting how well known Sweden seems to be in the world for its population; many countries with way more people but not popular like Sweden. I learned Swedish because I think its cool. Would love to learn other languages with even more speakers but Sweden has so much media and resources it's so easy.

They’ve got good jeans! Sorry just joking. They were big proponents of Eugenics before Hitler found out about it. But let’s be honest, a land of blondes is much more likely to be given media attention. Just like a war in Ukraine is a lot more talked about than a war in Sudan or Yemen. At least in the Western world.

I think most people would consider the Myrdal couple winners in the battle regarding eugenics, which were proponents of a strain of thought they called 'social hygiene' that was the main opposition to the eugenicists. One outcome was that the social democrats started to financially strangle the eugenicist institutions.

Swedish diplomats and politicians did quite a bit in international politics during large portions of the 1900s, and the country spawned some quite successful corporations and innovations. Dag Hammarskjöld, Folke Bernadotte, Nobel dynamite, Ericsson telecom, things like that.

Or you know - the myriad of world changing inventions, Nobel prize, insane amount of popular music, musicians and producers.

But yeah keep focusing on skincolor :)

When I grew up (Norway), the portions were quite small. And we didn't have that big of a selection.

If you go to the super market today in Norway, you'll likely find tens to hundreds of different flavors. Same in Sweden and Denmark. Interestingly enough, I don't think this kind of candy ("smågodt", which you buy by the weight) is too popular elsewhere? At least I haven't seen it too much in convenience stores when I've been traveling or living abroad. In Norway it is ubiquitous, almost everywhere you go shopping.

Also, inflation has really hit chocolate hard here. One small bar of chocolate will easily cost 30-40 NOK, which is equivalent to around €3-€4. The big bars can cost up to €6! But he smågodt / pick'n mix prices have remained quite stable. So a lot of people will just buy chocolate off those. Much, much cheaper.

In the US when I was a kid in a '70s most grocery stores and supermarkets had a Brach's candy bin/wall, labelled "Pick-A-Mix", where you could buy candy by weight. The only time we got any was when my grandmother was with us as she had a huge "sweet tooth". I think by the early 2000s they were all gone (at least I haven't seen any).

I grew up in Connecticut in the US (east coast, southern New England, adjacent to New York State). I remember Brach's displays in grocery stores, usually placed on an end cap. When I moved to Portland, Oregon (west coast) in 2006, Fred Meyer still had the Brach's candy-by-weight display. It survived until 2010 or so. I miss it. You could buy a piece of candy off the display by placing a quarter in the slot of the tiny attached lockbox. It was perhaps the last vestige of the honor system.

Where I grew up, candy by weight was also popular, but as we seized being a high trust society it just no longer worked and the supermarkets stopped selling candy by weight. The same thing will happen in Norway.

Not sure I get why it's a good thing to not have high trust societies but it's been decided that we can't have that anymore. Maybe it reduces obesity … thought that was somehow also less of a problem before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_confectionery

Fairly common in the UK too where it's known as "pick n' Mix".

Less common these days since Woolworths, the main chain known for Pick n' Mix closed in 2009.

Candy-by-weight is available in most supermarkets in Poland, but I've never seen it in the Czech Republic. Perhaps the Baltic states have it too? Or Germany?

Super popular in Spain. We got tons of candy stores that sell by weight. You actually find less candy in super markets.

In Germany, that‘s usually part of the "Kiosk"-Culture. You can select an assortment of candy for a fixed price (say, 3€), and the owner will ask you what you want and pick it for you in a small bag. At least that was the way it worked when I was younger, some 25-ish years ago.

I too used to eat this. Some of the traditional candies aren't so sweet, but they're sweet enough and these days sugar is for the loon, so you can't really eat candy.

I guess I still eat pastries though, including prinsessbakelse.

> ... patients of Vipeholm Hospital for the intellectually disabled in Lund, Sweden, were unknowingly fed large amounts of sweets to see whether a high-sugar diet would cause tooth decay.

Nice.

This is mostly a historic thing.

Kids and adults alike today in Scandinavia eat candy whenever they like it.

Popular stuff today include

- extra large energy drinks (65 cl)

- candy tasting vapes and snus

Not at all. My wife and I, living in Sweden, are practicing it today with our kids (5 and 8 years old), and my impression is that most families around us do the same.

Energy drinks, vapes and snus might be popular among teenagers, but has there ever been a time when you have been able to control what teenagers do to any higher degree.

I would say that restricting kids to having candy on Saturday or special occasions is still very common in Sweden and Norway. I would expect reactions from other parents if a parent said they let their kids eat candy any day.

As a swedish parent i see most parents still restrict kids candy only on Saturday. And parents rarely give their kids sodas and never vapes. Perhaps my observation would differ if my kids were in their later teens…

This is one of the things I never understood about Nordic countries.

Most of the people are so considerate about what they eat, good ingredients, nice compositions, making it look pretty as well..

..and then they proceed to shove great amounts of that chemical sugary shit down their throats !

As a matter of fact, even the good ingredients are 100% chemical.

As a matter of fact, all ingredients are 100% chemical.

Baryonic diets huh. I've been on one my whole life. With a sprinkle of neutrinos, of course.

To be fair, the Swedish candy is a lot better today than when I was growing up there, most of it is made with a lot less sugar and vegan in many cases, with natural flavors.

And there seems to be no candy that is as well made as Swedish/Nordic candy, we buy a suitcase filled with candy when we go back from Sweden, because Spanish candy is so far from the same quality...

Nordic countries have the best candies in the world, only decent competition coming from maybe Germany. Massive selection too.

Using chemicals isn't always a bad thing, I wish people wasn't that scared when they see the word. It is sugary shit though, but Swedish candies are commonly made with natural ingredients, such as plant-based colorings, fruit juice concentrates, and fewer artificial dyes and additives

I don't know, after reading about UPF I'm starting to avoid as many chemicals as possible.

"and then they proceed to shove great amounts of that chemical sugary shit down their throats"

Where do you get that? Is eating normal (whatever that means) amount of candies only on Saturday is triggering you to do such out of proportion comparisons?

> Where do you get that?

TFA: Candy consumption started increasing in 1980s and by 2010s, Sweden had the highest per capita candy consumption in the world.

I'd say that "highest consumption in the world" qualifies as "great amounts" :)

I think it mostly isn’t great amounts…

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