Bellevue Anthropologists in Sweden: Dieting in Sweden

I refuse to die with an inch deep belly button. My wife says she doesn't care how deep my belly button is, she just doesn't want me to die prematurely. For these two reasons I have gone on a diet. It's call the Dukan diet and as far as I can tell it is working pretty well. It's not too terrible, basically cutting out fat and carbs (pasta, rice, breads, potatoes, fruits, anything with sugar...etc.) and filling my diet with lean protein and vegetables. At home, low fat proteins are not hard to come by and are relatively cheap. Vegetables are also part of it, I can pretty choose any I want. Low fat foods are also readily available (milk, cheese, cottage cheese).

At home dieting is as common as left shoes, (the paleo-diet, Adkins, Mediterranean Diet, Grapefruit...the Baby Food diet?..etc http://www.webmd.com/diet/evaluate-latest-diets)

In Sweden, not so much...in talking to other people about dieting, the most common answer, "Don't eat so much and try to walk more than you sit." Although it is pretty sound advice, that doesn't work for me. Which leads me to my latest dilemma...how do I maintain my diet here. Having never tried dieting here, and I was not aware of the availability of things I need, fat free, low fat, diet, not fully fat, not made of bacon, not filled with carbs...I'm so lost. I've been to every store I can think of, scoured every shelf and asked every clerk (sometimes the some person more than once). The closes thing I found was "diet" pop sickles...

For Scale

Here are some diet cantaloupes...

Probably not diet but still they follow the rule, above.

Diet foods, namely fat free foods are not an option. 7% fat free is about the lowest I've found.

Labeling in general is so confusing here, some labels say 95% meat, which means what? 5% fat? 5% not meat?...Not sure, just gotta go with it. I have found that this diet is also very expensive...food costs about 3 times as much here...especially the protein. If this were a carb diet, I could eat for much much less money.

Here is a picture of a "soda" drink called "Socker Dricka" which literally translates to Sugar Drink, they don't even try to hide it with catchy names - SPRITE, DR. PEPPER, FANTA, COKE (not terribly catchy)...

In all honesty is there really any difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke

We were barbecuing the other day and I noticed this label on the charcoal bag...

I guess it is highlighting the fact that propane BBQs are CO2 unfriendly...I guess.

But talk about unfriendly...what about this?

The connection is also lost on me.

There is a much needed discussion in the U.S. surrounding the naming of sports teams using stereotypical imagery of First Nations groups. The Atlanta Braves, The Washington Red Skins, The Kansas City Chiefs. There are name that some people think are relics from a past era, other see things in other ways. You see both perspectives on from people of both First Nations descent and non-indigenous populations. There are people who being hurt by this and other who see the injustice in it. There is a long history of discrimination and insensitivity in U.S. history.

From an American perspective the ice-cream box is at best odd and worst extremely offensive. But what is the Swedish perspective? And is there reason to take offense at this image? If the glove were on the other hand, do we have images as part of our pop-culture that from the Swedish perspective could be considered offensive?