The Diet That Hit Sweden by Storm

This spring, when Dr. Michael Mosley appeared on the Swedish TV program Vetenskapens Värld (The World of Science), talking about his 5:2 fasting diet, it struck a chord with the Swedish public. Suddenly, Swedes in big numbers across the country started adopting Mosely’s method of eating normally five days a week, with a modified fast for the other two days. Newspapers and magazines helped feed the demand – Swedish food monthly Allt om Mat’s popular list of 5:2 recipes, for example. And book publisher Bonnier Fakta quickly bought the Swedish rights to Mosley’s book, The Fast Diet.

“We’ve never seen a health trend spread so broadly and quickly as 5:2; it caught on much faster than, for example, the low-carb, high-fiber diet, which has been hugely popular with Swedes,” says Charlotta Larsson, PR manager for book publisher Bonnier Fakta, who brought Mosley to Stockholm on Tuesday, following the success of 5:2-dieten – Friskare, smalare, längre liv med halvfasta, as the book is called in Swedish.

The biggest challenge for Bonnier Fakta was getting out the book as fast as possible to a, er, hungry public.

“We had a very short production time, which was an exciting challenge for everyone involved,” says Larsson. “One of the things we did to satisfy the demand was to put out the e-book version as soon as we could, on July 10, nearly a month before we released the print version on Aug. 7.”

In record time, it became one of the top-selling e-books for Bonnierförlagen, the publishing group of which Bonnier Fakta is a part. And the first edition of the print book sold out a week after its release. 

Next up is the cook book – 5:2-dieten Kokboken – which is due out on Sept. 17. The Swedish edition is the third to come out in the world, after the U.S. and U.K. versions.

“It was great having Dr. Mosley here,” says Larsson. “He talked about the science behind 5:2, and met with a lot of journalists. Plus we had Kerstin Brismar at the press meeting, the professor och nutrition researcher from Karolinska Institutet who wrote the foreward to the Swedish edition and who is undertaking research on the health effects of the 5:2 diet.”

As for Mosely, his take on why his diet has become so popular with the Swedish public is simple: “5:2 is easy to follow, you don’t need to change your whole lifestyle,” he said in Stockholm to the press. “I’m also happy to be getting so many questions about the health effects today, that’s what is most exciting about 5:2. I look forward to following Kerstin Brismar’s Swedish research.”