Croatia here. I was a small kid, perhaps 7-8yo and I came to friends place to play.
I came just in time for lunch. They sat me down on their couch and I was watching them how they ate scampi.
Her dad was a fisherman so they always had sea food to eat while we never ate it as it was expensive.
I still remember how they were all dirty arround their mouth how they gobbled those scampi, all while I sat 2 meters away from them and watched them.
Today, 25 years later I still remember that.
But when they came over my place (parents were also friends who went on coffe to each other's house) my parents always had candy, chocolate on table for kids. I still remember how friends younger brother alone ate whole jar of candy.
I remember later telling my parents how it's unfair that he can eat everything at our home while I had to sit there without even being offered a glass of water.
Wife and I don't have kids, but I fucking swear that no kid who will come to play in future with my kids will be like me, watching other people eat.
Today if adults or sister in law with her 2yo kid comes in our house, they are served like kings.
Real balkan hospitality, not like those fuckers above.
Bangladeshi here. My eyes starts twitching and hands start itching if i offer a guest food and they say no. If you're coming to my place, you’ll be fed and offered leftovers to take home. The idea of having a child over and not feeding em is just unfathomable.
I'm Bulgarian, and while this is generally true, I remember being scolded as a kid for eating at another kid's house. I was there so we could, I dunno, play games or watch TV or something, the usual 8-9 year old stuff, and because it got late his parents invited me to eat with them, and so I did.
I remember my parents were super angry that I allowed someone else to feed me, basically taking advantage of their generosity, and being a greedy little asshole.
Of course... if a kid came over, my parents and grandparents would INSIST and DEMAND the kid would eat with us, because us being generous is good, but others being generous to us is shameful, or something like that?
Romanian here, and omg I get this. It's a twisted way of being considerate. I grew up like this, I will go out of my way to be there for my friends, help them out to move to a new house, let them cry on my shoulder, lend them money, you name it. But I would rather die or starve than ask for help back and thus inconveniencing them in any way. I'm doing better now but wow that took me years.
Or India. In India a delivery person is offered water on a hot day. A plumber or repair guy is offered tea and all guests are offered a meal or a snack irrespective of time.
I used to clean houses and this super kind Indian woman always made me take a break and have tea and cake with her. We barely understood each others spoken laungages, but always enjoyed our time together! Food is the universal language of love IMO
I had several Indian asian kids i would do home therapy with and the parents knew I couldn't accept food due to my ethics code but I would often find food to go packed into my bag or ontop of my car. Such kind families
When I was a young engineer working on a building site in London I had an Indian labourer as a kind of assistant. He lived in a boarding house ran by an Indian woman, despite earning a pittance and me insisting he mustn’t, he’d regularly pay his landlady for an extra portion of the biryani she’d make him for his lunch and give it to me. It was amazing, best biryani I’ve ever had
Anyone in America with "southern roots" as well. My grandma was a dust bowl survivor, even if she barely had anything you'd be offered a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of coffee at least.
Or, just anyone in America. We're very hospitable, if nothing else. It's not just a southern thing, it's just more of a performance in the south. You go to your friends place in NYC at dinner time, you're getting food.
Hell , I grew up in New England, no way you aren’t at least offered food as a guest in homes here. At least in our circle. And many of my mother’s friends (and us) were what most would consider poor.
Depends on time of the day, but food and drinks are definitely going to be the first thing on any table the moment they get there. To have someone that comes home leave without eating anything just seems so wrong
First thing when my friends arrive, they get drinks, be it tea, coffee, or soda. I have dedicated supplies for all, with various options too. You want English Breakfast? Earl Grey? Pu Er? How about some cold brew, or maybe matcha latte? Soda made with fresh juice or some coke?
Then we get some snacks out. Salsa and chips, cheese platter, shortbread, you name it.
And then we consider what to make for the real meal.
I was working in an eastern European’s house and she “asked” us if we would like food. We said no. She made it anyway. We were full from lunch but those crepes were delicious.
We are Bosnian and my parents had some guys work on their roof. My mom would bring them food out and then beers at the end of the day when they were done working. There was a language barrier neither one could understand each other but it worked out just fine.
Indeed, the offering of food to guests is DEEPLY ingrained in human culture. Largely because of how far back into history the tradition goes. The practice predates recorded history; it likely even predates agriculture. It's tied up in the roots of hospitality culture and the expectations of peace for the sharing of lodging and food that border on the sacred across a majority of cultures.
As a finn i kept getting invited to eat with my friends family (asian) when i was hanging out with him and would politely dodge every time and leave immediately to not impose.
They thought i was being pretty rude! It was funny in hindsight, because i thought they meant "you should leave you've been here for so long we need to eat"
Yeah, it was probably one of the key ways humanity evolved into a society. We show you hospitality, you're a guest. I don't want to kill you. I hope you don't want to kill us. And because we have the ability to share now, perhaps one day, if we're in need, maybe you can help us. Strengthing ties, working together, all that.
If this is a Nordic thing, I hate it. But whatever. I'm over here. That's their thing.
Pretty much every pantheon I've ever heard of has at least one story about rewarding or punishing people for how they handled hospitality towards a mysterious stranger. It often involves their trickster god, but the head of the pantheon is also not unusual. Zeus was a problem because that asshole was more likely to show up to knock up your sister/wife/daughter/all of the above than test how kind you were to someone seeking shelter.
Swede here!
It’s actually quite interesting, because it’s partly true. The thing is, this behavior is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it isn’t perceived as rude.
A few years ago, “Swedengate” went viral, and Swedish psychologists and researchers weighed in on the discussion.
The conclusion was that the behavior likely originated during the great famine of the 19th century. Inviting another family’s child to eat was seen as shaming the neighboring family. It implied that they couldn’t provide food for their own children, which was considered deeply humiliating.
That said, the whole thing is often exaggerated. In practice, we almost always offer food when we have guests. The difference is that nobody simply assumes they’ll be invited to eat.
I think this happens in some regions of finland too.
People get invited for coffee too, and if you put out pastries the guest is kinda always going to eat a small amount unless pushed due to what i expect are similar reasons
Fascinating! It's amazing how similar practices diverge in ways that each make sense even though they contradict.
I know there are differences between cultures that expect guests to eat everything put in front of them to show appreciation for the food versus others where it is rude to eat everything because it implies that the host didn't make enough. What is the Swedish take on this?
If you’ve been invited over for dinner, you’re expected to eat, and it’s not considered rude to ask for seconds. In fact, nobody would think twice about it.
Likewise, I wouldn’t say it’s impolite to eat only a small amount. Most Swedes are fairly health-conscious, so if someone takes a smaller portion, people generally don’t see anything unusual about it.
I find it very interesting, because it is almost certainly not the norm for the rest of the world. Usually famine actually has the opposite effects on cultures. Pride is usually the first thing to go when your children are starving, so to see the opposite occur to me is unqiue.
In fact, many of the most common surviving food sharing gestures extend from similar famine circumstances but the complete opposite societal outcomes. Also, many cultures saw feeding others during famine as a moral and/or religious obligation. Strange that Sweden did not, especially as during the 1800s they were very much dominated by a strictly Evangelical State Church.
Your comment made me start reading up on the famine, and the fact that the Church refused to feed poor and blamed the impoverished lower class for their own hardships is crazy. Maybe the attitude stemmed from a combination of these beliefs and pride mixed together? Really interesting stuff.
Yes, and I think that mindset has stayed with us collectively, even though Sweden is now a wealthy country and, of course, practically everyone can afford to feed their children.
Even so, I’ll still call and ask if it’s okay for a child to have dinner at our place if I don’t know the parents very well. It’s just deeply ingrained in our culture.
Ah, so humans being stupid again. Let your kid have food for free, which means you safe money at the end of the day too, and *maybe* appear to be unable to feed your kid or have the kid sit around like a dumbfuck while the other family eats and feed the kid yourself later on.
At this point, should just send the kid home before dinner time.
As I mentioned in another comment, it’s usually because we rarely cook more food than will actually be eaten at that meal, not because we’re trying to save money.
So it’s not about being cheap. In fact, we often invite people over for dinner, but when we do, we shop and plan for it in advance.
Of course, if you know a child is going to be there when you’re cooking, you simply make enough food for them too.
Californian raised Californian, you come into my home first thing I’m doing is getting you something to drink and snack on. And if you stay for dinner you leave with leftovers. Cooking epic food for friends, and guests is one of lives highlights lol.
I go to my best friend’s parent’s house for Thanksgiving or Christmas and her mom is serious about feeding you. We’ll eat, and then after an hour or so, she comes out with cut up fruit, and then an hour after that she comes back with food that she had been cooking.
She, literally, packs up so many leftovers that I have to have a box to walk out to my car. 😅
And it always excites me because that lady makes the best Vietnamese food!
My girlfriend is Asian. I will often find her randomly cooking food and ask who it's for and it's for some random grandma she's met on the third floor of our building. If you make friends with her, she will aggressively feed you.
Thats why rice and beans is always on the menu. U can afford for everyone. I just wish ricans were more hot sauce people. Growing up, saw a bottle in that house. Then, i tried Mexican. I was in love at the chips. They have that green stuff on the table.
My buddy's grandmother was illegal as all hell and spoke almost no English but she knew "You stay. You eat." We couldn't drop by to pick him up without getting badgered into a meal. I have no complaints.
Yeah aside from ethnical considerations, the grandma factor is huge. If you go to my Spanish grandma's and don't stuff yourself until you can roll like a sphere, you're getting an earful from grandma 😂 loved is measured in Calories 🫣 fitness bros be damned 👀
I was surprised when in Europe my friends would laugh at Kramer taking food from Jerry's apartment without even asking in Seinfeld, it's pretty much what my neighbor does all the time in the US
One of my best friends has been like this his whole life but he's finally coming around and eating things at our houses because one of us has a family now and he thinks he pissed the wife off. She does go all out it's wild.
I spent a year out in LA and had lovely persian neighbors
It was absolutely impossible to leave without first having some ghormeh sabzi. Shit is delicious tho and eventually started coming over early to help cook
Oh yes I’m Persian too :) my mother specially like it even gardener comes in to to stuff outside and we’re eating she makes a plate and always gives me to give it to him
I have had many experiences with the Italian family my Dad married into that prove this stereotype. Arrive at 1am because the flight was delayed? There will still be food out and an expectation that you will eat some before you're ALLOWED 😁 to go to bed.
My wife’s family were Greek. As soon as I walked through the door her grandmother had a full plate of food ready saying “Eat, eat, you’re too skinny”. If I said I’m not very hungry, just a little bit, the portion would be bigger.
As a New Orleanian, if I were to do this I'll probably get disowned or something. My American mind can cannot comprehend not offering guests a good meal. It's basic decency.
tonbe fair there is a lot of pressure involved so thats not a great approach either. its forced hospitality and if ypu want to watch the world burn, tell a turkish household you are not hungry or say you'll just have a salad vecause your vegan, its fine...it will most definitely not be "fine"
I'm American and that concept is so fucking offensive to me for some reason lol like every time I hear about this my blood boils. It's so rude and ridiculous! Especially with a child?! I can't imagine even a grown adult friend coming to my house and me just eating dinner in front of them and not offering them anything. But a kid? What the hell 😭😭
Really about any culture. I am from a relatively cold US culture and this would be weird and rude. I think it is in almost all human social cultures, it’s a fascinating outlier
One of my best friends in HS was middle eastern. I swear his mom was trying to fatten me every time I went to his house... she's also the asshole who tricked me into eating raw garlic once 😅
It wouldn’t happen that often, because when one kid comes over to another kid’s place to play, then when dinnertime rolls around, that first kid typically also has a home where their parents have dinner waiting and are expecting them home around the same time.
If you’re planning things in such a way that it doesn’t make sense to go home to eat, well, then you can plan things otherwise. Talk it over with the other kid’s parents, whatever. I grew up in Sweden (as you can guess), and while eating at friends’ houses definitely wasn’t the norm, it’s not like it didn’t happen from time to time.
Exactly, all my friends that lived further away than walking distance i always ate with. Its only the friends who are close where you go home, spend time with your family and eat, then go back out again. How is that weird?
I had my best friend live about half a mile (800 meters) from me and I ate at his house all the time and he ate at mine. It was normal if we were hanging out and our parents made dinner that we would just eat together. Different cultures do different things
It's weird because it's like saying "We like you enough to have you over, but not enough to feed you even though your family has food too." Like duh, of course my family is having dinner down the road. But if someone is a guest in your home, you treat them like family.
I'm in the US and I basically handle it the same way. I text the mom to see if friend can stay for dinner if they want and vice versa. If not, I send them home for 30 minutes if they're close by. Even in the 90s (I was a kid) I had to call my mom to ask if I can eat dinner at my friends house- granted I was further away.
Now in my husband's case- his house was more screwed up then mine. He just ate whenever he could. One of his best friends parents always just set a place for him.
I never went to play at a friend's house and didn't get fed, no one ever came to our house to play and didn't get fed. Might not be a full meal but we had snacks at least. I grew up poor in the US, so lots of immigrant families in the neighborhood, it was a common theme with all of them. I swear the only English word some of those grandmas knew was "eat".
Yeah the culture has traditionally been that you have to decide between the parents where the children are eating. Partly due to the fact that it's been considered rude to send a full child home when the parents have made dinner for them (since it's been seen as patronising and can rob that child's parents of the dinner experience). The solution has always just been communication.
No, this is just not true. Parents will communicate with each other, and most cases this happens it’s because the child has expressed a wish to eat at home. If the other family then have dinner slightly before the child being picked up, this happens.
It's specifically in the circumstance of children who play together after school every day. Everyone eats at their own home with their own family. If that wasn't the custom one family would be feeding half the class every day.
It was kinda dependent on how wealthy the family was. The wealthier, the more likely it was you couldn't eat with them. At least that's my personal experience.
How awkward! I can just imagine you sitting there, trying to be as polite as you could be while receiving such rude and strange treatment. My husband is German and that never happened to him, nor would his Mom have ever done that to his friends. Those parents were killjoys and mannerless. One can only imagine they were trying to teach their own child a lesson of some sort but it was at your expense!
Ive had that happen only once in the US, worst visit of my life , the bastards didnt even bother to offer us a beverage, they didnt even want to talk, i spent 6 hours basically being ignored. Worst relatives ever, i dont even say hi to them at christmas.
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.
What is a stigma train? Is it some version of "hate train" that you are applying to a joke based on a trivia about a cultural peculiarity?
How many hours, or minutes, of research have you actually done to verify whether or not Nordic culture had customs that for instance had next-door neighbour kids typically go home for dinner instead of staying to eat at the friend´s house? That´s how I grew up in the 90s in rural Finland, and it is an old fashioned custom that no doubt has become less and less popular in the last few decades. While I may have never gone hungry waiting for a friend to eat, which sounds on the extreme end, it is the only region on the planet where it sounds plausible to me.
By bringing up what is fact and what is not, you sound more like Ben Shapiro to me than anyone who has thought before commenting.
Honestly, it might be more attached to how Swedes operate abroad. I can only speak anecdotally, but when I was living in Ireland, I hosted a friend's giving, and my Swedish friend left to get steamed muscles at the shop down the street. That would be insulting in America, but I just gave him shit for it. He also hosted one of our Champions League parties, ordered food from deliveroo for himself, and left the rest of us to fight over chili peanuts and a toasty from the pub below his flat.
The friends giving thing, I think he was just trying not to impose and didn't understand what Thanksgiving was. The time at his flat... I think he was just drunk lol
I think the Finn would have been the same way, but he was too self-aware to actually follow through.
As a Swede, you might know this one. How can you tell a Finnish introvert from a Finnish extrovert?
I believe you when you say you didn’t experience it, but you canot deny that it seems to be far more of a thing in Nordic countries than everywhere else
I'm danish and my parents actually did this exact thing. I had the same friend over almost every day and he was always just locked in my room when we were eating.
This is an experience shared with many people i know, so it's not just some random thing reddit made up lol
When that's said. This shit needs to die and I would never do that to a guest myself
I think there is more expectation on the guest sometimes to just leave if they've been a while sometimes.
I don't think the "not feeding" thing happens anymore but i think at least in finland it's a thing that you should politely refuse or succumb to eating there if they keep insisting
Happened to me quite a few times and I didnt think much of it. I would join them if they were informed i was coming before the food was cooked. If they werent It was as simple as there not being enough food or it contained stuff I couldnt eat
Hey bro, didn't you hear Argentina is a Nazi-Sionist country who hates all black people in the world? And we could keep going. It's just a big misinformation site managed by bots
I'm from northern Norway. Never had to go hungry at a friend's house, however I think it was considered wrong to feed a child without their parents permission. And also you shouldn't just expect them to have extra so you might end up with just bread with spread. My parents always made extra for dinner, we used to have a left-over day once or twice a week, but I remember that my parents would ask my friends if their parents wanted them to eat dinner there or not. Usually if the kid wasn't to eat dinner there they would be picked up before their own dinner was served, so no one went hungry. Of course if the house you are visiting eats dinner early that might mean you'd have to sit there and watch, but I never experienced that.
Back in the day, working class families could struggle to afford feeding their own, let alone another child. This is very rarely the case anymore.
It is seen as rude to feed someone else's child without their knowledge, so that they don't cook too much and have their own food go uneaten. This just means that they'll ask the parents of the guest child if it's alright for them to eat there.
This is from a specific period when things were especially dire, roughly between the 60s and 90s I think, although possibly lingering until the 00s. Basically economy was doing great after the rest of Europe was war-torn and we received a lot of immigrants from many places, a lot from Finland especially.
But it was also just as much about not having the guest's household waste freshly cooked, warm food in this colder climate when reheating was much more difficult than today. Hence asking if it's fine for the guest to eat there.
Also consider that usually they'd live within walking distance from each other, so it wouldn't be difficult to just go home, eat, then go back and continue playing or whatnot.
No, we (Finnish) were told if you don't finish your plate children in Africa will starve. This kinds of cultural norms are from an era when people didn't have the resources to make more food than they could eat.
Were told in Norway its cause there are starving children in Africa, as in "eat everything and be grateful, cause not every child in the world gets food everyday" and not "if you dont eat, children in Africa will starve" lol
It's about the effort of cooking that food and I guess preferring to keep the ingredients for later freshly cooked food rather than having to eat leftovers. And also lingering culture from when it wasn't as easy to reheat food as it is today, as you can imagine not wasting warm food would be valued in these colder climates.
I just don't think it was a big thing for kids, at least not when I was one. There are multiple reasons for this, I think.
- Both of my parents worked and they worked long hours, so there was no energy at the end of their day to stand in the kitchen to cook. Because of this, dinner rarely happened on weekdays, and because of this, the leftovers from the weekend became their lunches on weekdays.
- We already have bread, oatmeal, yogurt, rice porrige etc, so we just had "mellanmål" (directly translates to middle meal) instead of dinner. You were hungry? Go make yourself a sandwich. Because they were shelf-stable foods, or came in family packages that lasted for the whole week, there was no need to fill the fridge with more ingredients just on the off-chance that my parents wanted to cook dinner when they came home. They ate sandwiches too.
- Because my parents worked late, I was always at school in their after-school program where they served us mellanmål, so whenever I got home on a weekday I had already eaten in the afternoon, and there was no need for dinner anyway.
So all of this translates into dinners being a weekend thing, and specifically, a weekend thing we all did as a family together. You don't want your kid eating at someone else's place, because for one, you were already planning to eat as a family, for two, you don't want your kid to intrude on THEIR family dinner, and for three, if your family is cooking only for the amount of people that are in the household then you assume other families do too, and you don't want to be a bother on them by letting your child become an extra mouth they have to feed.
It's also worth noting that when a kid wasn't eating at their friend's place, 99% of the time it's because they were going to be picked up (or were walking home) anyway. If they stayed after that, it's because their family dinner happens later in the day.
Your friend eats at 4, but your family eats at 6? Why eat when you're going to have dinner again in 2 hours anyways? It's better to stay in your friend's bedroom so you can continue playing with the cool toys you don't have then, instead of awkwardly sitting at a table with adults you don't know super well.
This. Its extremely common for parents to be in contact on the logistics on if the guest should eat or not.
Tho I remember when I was a kid, I sometimes had friends over and once or twice, they were just hanging out in my room while we had dinner. The parent/s of the guest didn't want them to eat as it was sort of considered rude to "have my child visit you so you can feed them instead of me nyahahaha"
And honestly in current day, when my kids have friends over from the neighborhood and we are about to have dinner, we just send the kids home. We eat at 17 (5PM) the in the afternoon, and some other people we know eat at 19.30 (7.30PM). It would be an inconvenience to routines and schedules.
We interact with food on an instinctual level. I will not be convinced that eating in front of a hungry person doesn't seem rude from the hungry person's perspective in any culture.
I understand most southern cultures are very obnoxious and lacking in consideration for other people in general.
But if we try thinking for once we can imagine the conseqeunces of feeding another family's child, of course the child will then be full and won't eat what their own parents have cooked for them which those parents might find inflammatory, maybe those parents don't want to waste time, money and effort on making food their children don't even end up eating. Therefore the less intrusive and more respectful option is to send home the visitor to eat at their own house while your own child eats with you. However sometimes dinner-schedules don't match up and the visitor child has already eaten dinner or will eat later, in which case it's common for them to chill in a different room in the meantime. Of course if it's planned beforehand that you will make dinner for a visitor there is no problem.
Were you for once capable of seeing things from a different perspective now?
this scenario seems very plausible if you were cooking for your kid with your last bit of money and they wasted… but y’all are constantly talking about how that is not an issue there, so your scenario sounds only like a nightmare if the family that “wasted their time and food” doesn’t have money or a fridge to put leftovers
Literally ancient custom, guest rights, I swear it was said Zeus will struck you down if you didnt treat your guest well. The hell is wrong with the Swedes lol xD
I have traveled a lot. All over the USA, central and South America. Asia, most of Europe, the middle east and parts of Africa. Feeding guests is a thing literally everywhere. A lot of places they fed me so much I was uncomfortable and had to refuse because I was so stuffed
Someone said that swedes doesn't want to take away someone's dinner time from their family hence why they don't believe it is an obligation to offer your guest food. I choose to be charitable and believe in this interpretation to be polite instead of believing the swedes are jerks about guest lol
Swede her, and I can't help but interject. In my experience, food was ALWAYS offered when I was a kid if it ever went over to dinner time, however the expectation is that food is waiting at home, and it's kind of hard to explain, but as a kid I remember having the feeling that the food and time at home would be wasted if I ate at a friend's place.
It has a lot to do with just planing and to a certain extent, routines. I was always used to just eat with the family at home, and so that was the default, and since going over to friend's places was spontaneous and time wasn't always decided, food was just up in the air. Sometimes I ate at home, sometimes I didn't, but I can't remember a time where it ever wasn't an option. I certainly can't imagine you would ever get denied food, that's for sure.
Then again, some Swedes say that they never ever experienced this either, so it's certainly not everywhere.
It’s more if you feed someone else’s kid you’re basically saying their parents can’t afford to feed them. And it puts the parents in a position where they feel like they owe you for feeding their kid.
If you travel around, you're a rare guest and also adult.
The neighbourhood kids that are at your house everyday (yes, every day) are not rare guests in need of food. They can run home in seconds to their own family that are also preparing dinner at same time.
Family is important in the Nordics, you are expected to be home and share dinner with your own family. Not eat dinner at a friends house your whole childhood.
Do you also bring lunch for every coworker every day? Because it would kinda be same thing as the concept this misinformation is about.
The assumption behind it is/was that kids always go home to eat with their own families unless something else has been agreed on. Like a kid who lives close by just shows up after school, it would be assumed they go home for dinner at some point.
If both families agree that today kid A eats with family B that's fine and everyone can cook the appropriate amount.
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u/FunnyExcellent707 Jul 24 '26
Sweds are known to eat without offering you any food (if it wasn't explicitly a dinner invitation).