How food culture is being weaponised by the far right, from raw-egg masculinity to nationalist school meal policies in Sweden
In Sweden’s anti-racist publication Expo, journalist Jenny Damberg traces how food has become a political battleground in the country. Across two features – ‘Egg White Diet’ and ‘School Food Nationalism’ – Damberg explores how diet, masculinity, race and national identity are increasingly fused in far-right ideology.
The first article investigates the subculture surrounding British far-right influencer Charles Cornish-Dale, known online as Raw Egg Nationalist (REN). Cornish-Dale promotes the consumption of extreme quantities of raw eggs, unpasteurised milk and offal, sometimes suggesting 12 to 36 eggs a day, as part of a broader political project to strengthen “white nations.” His rhetoric blends bodybuilding culture with white nationalist conspiracy thinking. Protein becomes more than nutrition; it is framed as civilisational defence.
Damberg situates REN within a wider digital ecosystem of “protein activists” who combine caveman aesthetics, anti-globalist ideology and hypermasculine grievance. Industrial food systems, soy products, seed oils and vegetarianism are portrayed as tools of a corrupt global elite allegedly intent on weakening Western men. In this worldview, eating meat, particularly red meat and animal fats, signals virility, racial strength and resistance. Vegetarians are mocked as emasculated “soy boys,” while insects, promoted in sustainability debates, are cast as dystopian symbols of elite control, linked rhetorically to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.”
The article connects these narratives to broader anxieties about bodily decline and loss of control in the wake of the pandemic, economic instability and political polarisation. Dutch researcher Ruben Stoffelen notes that focusing on one’s physique through strict diet and exercise offers them a sense of salvaged agency. Yet Damberg underscores the risks: excessive meat consumption carries health consequences, and unpasteurised milk can spread infection. What masquerades as ancestral authenticity is, she suggests, a highly modern political performance.
The second article shifts from fringe subcultures to municipal policy. In several Swedish municipalities governed with support from the Sweden Democrats (SD), school meal guidelines have been revised to promote “Swedish home cooking.” In practice, this often means increasing the frequency of pork dishes while eliminating alternatives for students who avoid pork for religious reasons. A vegetarian option remains, satisfying legal requirements, but specific accommodations have been removed. Damberg shows how these changes function symbolically. Pork, a food prohibited in Judaism and Islam, becomes a marker of belonging. Jonatan Leer, professor of food studies, argues that insisting on “pork or nothing” signals a political stance on migration and integration. The debate echoes Denmark’s earlier “meatballgate” controversy and fits within what sociologist Michaela DeSoucey terms “gastronationalism,” the use of food to define and defend national identity.
Damberg also notes the practical consequences. In Uddevalla, food waste reportedly increased after policy changes, and replacing vegetarian or poultry options with pork has raised costs in some municipalities. Meanwhile, national dietary guidelines from the Swedish Food Agency recommend reducing red meat for health and climate reasons. The increase in the use of pork cut against scientific advice.
Taken together, the two articles reveal how food operates simultaneously at the level of the body and the state. Online, raw eggs and red meat become symbols of racial revival. In schools, pork becomes a tool for signalling who fully belongs.
The original articles by Jenny Damberg, ‘Äggstrem diet’ and ‘Skolmatsnationalism’ were first published in Swedish on May 23, 2025 on Expo.
They are available here and here.
Expo is a Swedish anti-racist magazine founded in 1995 by journalist and author Stieg Larsson. It is published by the non-profit Expo Foundation (Stiftelsen Expo) and focuses on investigative journalism about nationalist, racist, anti-democratic, antisemitic and far-right movements and organisations.
