Athletes & Sports
What World Cup 2026 teams are actually eating
For elite national teams, food isn't an afterthought during a tournament — it's logistics, planned months ahead, with a chef and a shipping manifest.
Norway's 1,000kg of imported food
Norway's men's national team transported more than 1,000 kilograms of food from Norway to their training base for the 2026 World Cup, including hundreds of kilos of Atlantic salmon and white fish, over 100kg of brunost (traditional Norwegian brown cheese), and roughly 6,000 oranges. Aaron Espeland, who has cooked for the national team for 35 years, traveled with a full culinary staff to prepare every meal.[1]
Argentina's 500kg of beef and the post-win asado
Argentina brought nearly 500kg of beef from home for the same tournament, prepared by longtime team chef Diego Iacovone. The squad's traditional asado (barbecue) is treated as part of team identity — reserved as a reward the coaching staff allows the players to step outside their strict routine and enjoy after important wins.[2]
Why do this at all?
It isn't about comfort food or homesickness. Both teams describe it as a performance decision: a World Cup is a high-stress, condensed schedule where a single case of food-related illness or gut discomfort can end a player's tournament. Sudden changes in diet can disrupt digestion, sleep, and concentration — all things that affect performance directly — so elite squads try to eliminate that variable entirely by controlling every ingredient down to where it was sourced.[2] It's the same principle sports dietitians give any athlete: never try something new on game day.