As Boston.com tells it, there was a viral TikTok video almost two years ago about Swedish candy, and ever since Americans have been mad for the stuff. Swedish candy doesn’t contain gluten, corn syrup, or trans fat, so it’s, well, no, not healthy, but let’s say perhaps slightly less unhealthy.
In Sweden, candy has always been popular, mostly on Saturdays, because medical authorities in the 1950s created lördagsgodis, which translates to Saturday sweets, to promote only eating candy once per week in an effort to limit rising rates of tooth decay, according to the BBC.
Lördagsgodis! How delightful, a specific day of the week devoted to sweet treats. Alas, Wikipedia provides a less-than-delightful origin story:
The tradition started as a health recommendation in 1959 following the government-funded Vipeholm experiments, where patients of Vipeholm Hospital for the intellectually disabled in Lund, Sweden, were unknowingly fed large amounts of sweets to see whether a high-sugar diet would cause tooth decay.
Governments in the mid-twentieth century sure did love experimenting on distressed populations. Thank goodness that in modern times, governments never trample on the rights of marginalized communities.
Anyhow, the aforelinked Boston.com article included this line that really stuck out to me:
Since then, lördagsgodis has remained a weekly tradition in Sweden and is now becoming a near-daily habit for some Bostonians.
Ain’t that America? The name literally translates to “Saturday’s (Lördags) Sweets (godis)”. The whole purpose was to reduce candy consumption, by making it a special treat.1 It should absolutely not be a near-daily habit! But after the extended run of Black Fridays we just finished, not to mention months with only 24 days, it’s clear that calendars no longer have any meaning.
In closing, I would like you to be aware that until Mondelēz International serves them with a cease and desist order, Boston has a store called “The Sweetish Fish”.
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