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A rising interest in the commercial benefits of locally and regionally connoted food culture for rural development is notable in Sweden. Local and regional food culture is used as a tool both to encourage the rural economy, but also to fulfil urban residents' dreams of an authentic rural idyll. A qualitative study of a government project involving ten rural food businesses was performed to analyse how local food culture was used as a business advantage. The managers were interviewed and their conceptions analysed using company documents, observational notes and photographs. The results revealed that the managers do use food culture to gain a competitive advantage. They produce only those products that signal perceived ‘good taste’ and those that best reflect urban customers' ideas of rurality. It is also important to satisfy their kitchen staff's demands to work with developing urban food trends, otherwise the managers risk losing skilled staff. Rural customers are of minor day‐to‐day economic value, except when using the restaurant on festive occasions. But on those occasions, rural customers demand meals prepared in an urban classical style, not the local and regional food culture they eat at home. The most advantageous local and regional food culture for rural development is therefore that which best combines the urban ideal of the countryside, authentic rural products, and the rural ideal of urban classical cuisine.

The parental reports of children's food habits pointed at favourable eating patterns for most investigated children. Breakfast skipping, diet soft drinks and low-fat milk consumption were more frequent among OW/OB children. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine the causal relationships.

The aim of this study was to analyse how the European Union (EU) ministerial meals during Sweden's EU‐chairmanship 2001 were devised, and how the official representatives of Sweden chose to interpret and present a national image based on local and regional food identities. The manufacture of the Swedish culinary profile was compared with the same process during Finland's EU‐chairmanship 1999 and Denmark's EU‐chairmanship 2002. Sixteen professionals involved in the decision‐making process in the three countries were interviewed in 2001 and 2002. The regional food profile chosen in Sweden supported different political goals such as the idea of the production of local food and local economic development. Local and regional food culture had a broad and open definition, but the decisions as to what constituted local and regional food culture as served at the ministerial meals were made at the top political level. The central decision‐making process transformed the concept of a typical local and regional food culture into a political tool serving political goals, with the end product presented at different EU‐ministerial meals.

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