The cereal aisle is judging us

Don’t expect to find Lucky Charms or many other sugary cereals when visiting a Swedish grocery store.

Most of the cereal is Muesli, which is crunchy, unsweetened oats with raisins or another dried fruit. There are several varieties of this stocked on the shelves. Other than Muesli, you can find Special K, corn flakes, multigrain Cheerios or high fiber selections.

Yes, there are Coco Puffs and Frosted Flakes, but these are typically in a small box, and there are very few of them on the shelf compared to the healthier choices.

I went shopping with Christine, our Swedish language teacher, so she could help me differentiate between the various kinds of cheese, flour, spices, and so on. She said Swedish people tend to frown on eating too many sweets, especially when it comes to their children.

Now this is of course an admirable thing. In the U.S., there clearly is a major childhood obesity problem that Michelle Obama and others are trying to solve.
 
What’s interesting, though, is Swedes must really love gummy because there are aisles dedicated to many different kinds of this sweet in grocery stores and movie rental shops. Christine explains that kids can fill up bags with this once a week.

Russell’s co-worker Peter says he will get ice cream with his children, but only every Wednesday.

Now, it seems Swedish people are eating in the healthiest way I know: having good-for-you meals most of the week, but allowing yourself sweets in moderation. All the fad diets where you cut out everything sweet just don’t seem to work. We can certainly learn a valuable lesson from the Swedes.