Grocery Shopping in Sweden

There are a couple of big supermarkets in Linköping, but there are also a lot of smaller stores. The big stores are pretty far from our apartment, so we only make occasional trips to them -- most of our shopping is at the small stores. They aren't exactly small. They usually have a good selection of food, including produce and meats and everything. But they usually have less varieties or brands of each food.

At many of the stores you have to make a deposit if you want to use a shopping cart. The carts are all hooked to each other, and you have to put a 5 or 10 kronor coin (about $0.50 - $1.00 US) in to unhook a cart. You get this coin back when you put the cart back. That way you will put the cart back where it belongs instead of just leaving it wherever. The carts look about the same as in the U.S., except both the front and back wheels can turn. In the U.S., usually only the front wheels turn. I guess having all four wheels turn makes it easier to get around in tighter spaces, but it takes some getting used to. Most of the time we use a shopping basket instead. We usually go shopping every couple of days, so a basket is usually enough. ¹

Most people bring their own bags for the groceries. You can buy bags at the store. They aren't expensive, but it's enough to convince people to save and re-use their bags. I think they should do this more in the U.S. -- it's a little inconvenient at times, but I'm sure it cuts down on waste quite a bit.

Our first difficulty in buying food is that the names are all in Swedish. In many cases the names are very similar, so it's not a problem. And many foods have their picture on the container, so that's not too difficult. It's a bit more difficult to tell the difference between varieties of things -- for example, figuring out the difference between different types of ground meat or flour. I have a Swedish to English dictionary on my PDA which helps some -- but it is missing a lot of words.

In some cases, the brand names are the same here -- we have Kellogg's cereals, and Uncle Ben's rice. Other times, the brand names are different, so that doesn't always help either.

Finding particular foods can be difficult at times. For example, we haven't been able to find baking soda, but somebody just told us this weekend that it is in the section with the spices (instead of with the baking goods like we are used to). Some things, like shortening, don't appear to be available at all. And some things are just a bit different -- instead of vanilla extract, they have vanilla sugar.

We usually eat a lot of pasta at home, and fortunately it is pretty common here too. However, ready-made pasta sauce isn't usually available. They do have a lot of sauce mixes (mix the powder with milk and water), but then you have to add vegetables and things on top of that. Of course, the instructions are in Swedish, but we don't have too many problems figuring it out. So it's a bit more work.

They have pretty much the same fruits and vegetables that we have in the U.S., but they are generally better quality here. They have some packaged bread, but most of the bread is fresh -- we like it, although it tends to go bad faster than our ultra-preserved bread at home. Milk comes in 1 liter boxes -- you have to cut them open with scissors. You can buy peanut butter (apparently it has only recently become available), but it's expensive.

Juice concentrate comes in small boxes or plastic containers. (We didn't realize that these were concentrate at first. We wanted individual juice boxes, but after we bought them Sara realized they didn't have any straws, and then noticed they were concentrate. So she bought a plastic bottle of juice, and then as we were about to drink it somebody asked us if we had water to mix it with.) Most of the juices are pretty normal flavors. They do have pear juice here, which we don't see at home. It's good.

We are still trying to figure out the cheese here. They have a lot of different varieties of cheese, but very few that we recognize. No cheddar (actually, we did find some cheddar, but it looked like it was a really old kind -- on the verge of getting moldy), monterey jack, colby, or mozzarella (or at least not the same -- I think we had something claiming to be mozzarella once, but it wasn't the same at all). They do have Swiss, but we don't eat that much. So we're trying to find some kinds that we like. We've found a couple that aren't bad. Most of the cheese that we've tried are either really mild (not enough flavor) or they are strong and sour. We just learned this weekend that there are some cheese stores that will let you have samples, so Sara will have to go and find some good ones.

You can buy herbs or spices like you do in the U.S., but you can also buy a lot of fresh herbs -- they come in little pots.

In general, the Swedes rely much less than we do on ready-made foods. There isn't nearly as much junk food as in the U.S. They have cookies, but not as many varieties and usually not as sweet. They have pop, but only about 4 kinds (and no Mountain Dew).

In Stockholm, there are Gray's American Food stores, which sell American food but are expensive. Some of the stores here have a shelf devoted to Gray's American Food. We've seen stuff like yellow mustard (the mustard here is all brown, although it seems milder than the brown mustard is in the U.S., so I don't mind it), and marshmallows. We saw a show on TV a few days ago with somebody going to one of the Gray's stores and they came out with Salt & Vinegar chips -- now Sara wants to go there next weekend. [Actually, we later discovered that there is a Swedish brand of chips that also have Salt & Vinegar. ²]

So, there are quite a few differences, but we are managing. It's a bit difficult trying to make American food with Swedish ingredients, but we are having some successes. And some failures. Sara says I am losing weight (which I attribute to the lack of quality junk food) but we are surviving. And hopefully by the time we return home we will have learned a bit of Swedish cooking. Personally, I would like to find at least one food here in Sweden which we will later say "I really wish we had some _______ here in the U.S." I don't think we have found it yet, but we have several months to go. [Update: when I visited Sweden again a few months after we moved back to the U.S., the main food I wanted to make sure I had was pear juice and pear soda. ³]

1: 04 May 2003 - The original document claimed that you had to rent shopping carts, but in reality you only have to put in a deposit.

2: 04 May 2003 - We discovered that you can buy Salt & Vinegar chips here.

3: 30 Dec 2004 - I noted that pear juice and pear soda were among my favorite foods available in Sweden but not in the U.S.