The story circulated widely, often in distorted form: Norway’s team supposedly brought its own food to the United States because it distrusts American products. Several fact-checking organizations, including Snopes and the Associated Press, have since set the record straight.
What’s true: the Norwegian Football Federation did bring in several hundred kilos of salmon, trout, halibut, and cheese from Norway for the team’s base camp, set up in North Carolina, along with three federation chefs. What’s false: framing this decision as a rejection of American food. National teams very regularly travel with their own cooks and some of their usual ingredients, for reasons of dietary routine and nutritional continuity before matches — not distrust of the host country. The rest of the squad’s diet, in fact, comes from local American products.
The anecdote remains a nice entry point into a real, low-visibility topic: the food logistics of national teams during a multi-week tournament, where every detail — sleep, recovery, digestion — matters over the long haul.