Norwegian daycares trade junk food for tubed fish

One of the many things we love about Annalise’s barnehage is that it provides breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. This is logistically simpler than her American daycare, which had snacks but required us to pack meals. If we forgot to prep it, we spent the morning filling the lunch box while also dressing Annalise, brushing teeth, and singing her ten verses of Wheels on the Bus. So how do the two cultures’ meals stack up?

Breakfast

The Norwegian breakfast is hot oatmeal (havregrøt) with raisins and cinnamon, and a glass of milk.

This is similar to what we packed at home: overnight oats and a bottle of milk. Unfortunately, her American daycare also gave the kids Froot Loops at breakfast, so the oatmeal was often ignored.

	Norway 🇳🇴	America 🇺🇸
Oatmeal	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Milk	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Froot Loops		🇺🇸

Lunch

In the US, her packed lunch consisted of a sandwich, cheese, crackers, a vegetable, and fruit. In Norway it’s almost always pålegg. Pålegg, which translates as “toppings,” is a catch-all term for spreads applied to bread or crackers to make an open-faced sandwich. Common types are jellies, cheeses, and things squeezed from tubes.

The pålegg options at Annalise’s daycare include:

• Kaviar: A paste made from wild-caught Arctic cod roe that has been cured, smoked on beech wood, blended, and packaged into a tube. Whatever you imagine this tastes like, you are probably not far off. An acquired taste.

• Skinkeost: A viscous cheese with little blended pieces of ham, also served from a tube.

• Brunost: Carmelized cow or goat cheese. This is one of Norway’s most iconic foods and is served in any form from fondue to pancake toppings. Pretty good!

On Fridays the kids get a fish-based hot meal. This week it was pasta with cream sauce and fish balls, with a side of apples.

Here’s the tally through lunch:

	Norway 🇳🇴	America 🇺🇸
Oatmeal	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Milk	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Froot Loops		🇺🇸
Sandwich	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Crackers	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Cheese	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Vegetable		🇺🇸
Fruit	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Tubed Ham	🇳🇴
Tubed Fish	🇳🇴
Hot Fish	🇳🇴

Many Norwegians continue eating pålegg for lunch as adults. They are quick to tell you that a matpakke (packed lunch) of pålegg is best and throw shade on the Swedes, who eat what they consider is inferior: a hot lunch.

Afternoon Snack

The Norwegian afternoon snack consists of fruit and more pålegg. At her American daycare, the snack was something nutritionally deficient, such as goldfish or graham crackers. Since Annalise often did not find this filling, she started stealing food from her caregivers. She once opened the purse of a teacher who was eight months pregnant and ate all her pineapple. She stole another teacher’s Fritos.

Here’s the final tally:

	Norway 🇳🇴	America 🇺🇸
Oatmeal	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Milk	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Froot Loops		🇺🇸
Sandwich	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Crackers	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Cheese	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Vegetable		🇺🇸
Fruit	🇳🇴	🇺🇸
Tubed Ham	🇳🇴
Tubed Fish	🇳🇴
Hot Fish	🇳🇴
Fritos		🇺🇸

So while Norway hasn’t yet provided a vegetable, it makes up for it by providing fish instead of junk food. Annalise eats vegetables at dinner, so it seems like we’re trading up.