What It Means to “Eat Well” in France and Sweden1

Which collective ideas do consumers in France and Sweden use to think about what it means to eat well? What are the most important differences between the countries and how can they be understood? To answer the above questions, this study uses open-ended survey questions from Sweden and France together with in-depth qualitative focus group interviews from both countries. The five most common ideas from each country were identified, resulting in a list of six central ideas: a balanced diet; pleasure from taste; pleasure from conviviality; regular meals; cooked food; and natural and pure products. Two of these ideas are more or less unique to only one culture—conviviality to the French and regular meals to the Swedes—but differences are also notable within each idea. Finally, the author argues that the question of what it means to eat well belongs to two different “worlds” in the two countries—a domestic world in France and an industrial world in Sweden. This belonging explains most of the differences found in the data.