Is Polish food still more natural than in the West?

Thanks NorthManc. In the meantime I've found out already :) And we call it Reuzel, Spek or Spekvet.

>^..^<

M-G (I don't think there is actually an English name for it besides fat bacon)

yah, that and lots of exercise as well. if you don't move the healthy food will not help you keep in shape.

True, but don't go from hardly any movement to massive movement all at once as that is bad for your body too.

>^..^<

M-G (is not going to run today because of the torrential rain all day long)

I meant you not me. I am in a good shape:). It's all about me:) me, moi!!!!!!!

(needs another coffee after last night)

Jajajaja :)

Slowly but surely I'm getting back in the shape that I had a few years ago, actually before I came to Ireland. But you know why I couldn't go suddenly from almost nothing to full time...

>^..^<

M-G (doesn't need that much weightloss actually)

But apart from synthetic food which arrived to us when communism fell, healthy natural food is still available in Poland. So, you still have a choice.

As it is in Germany, NL, and nearly all other countries in Europe. You have a choice too in the West.

>^..^<

M-G (thinks it's nonsense to state that all food in the West is somehow processed)

jajaja:)


I do, but on a serious note: brisk walking and dancing is underestimated. One doesn't have to run and at a certain age is not recommended anyways, because of the high impact on the

knees.


BMI is very helpful in determining the healthy weight.


I would disagree, there is quite a lot of foods that are Polish made and have a lot of chemicals, such as bread, unless it is made in a natural way. Beer/wine has lots of chemical to speed the fermentation process.

Agreed. Luckily the customers can in small amount dictate what they want in terms of quality. Unfortunately that "better food" is more expensive and by logic only available for the potent customers.

I hope that Poland will not to the extend follow the "West train". During my projects I had all over Poland in the 90's and the frequent travel, I was positively surprised or better happy to eat food with the quality I remember from my childhood.


Unfortunately the bigger amount is processed or genetic manipulated.

Hmm, I am not such an expert, I don`t have a laboratory at home to examine food.
But I always prefer Polish food to foreign, like most Poles, I think. The only exception is fruit and veg - oranges, tangerines etc.

"Mostly processed meat"? Where did you shop? Also, if I recall correctly, you went to some place called Danzig. Perhaps if you had gone to Gdansk you would have discovered some of the plentiful fresh seafood.

Last year I did quite a bit of research on the organic food market in Poland. Firstly most Poles do not know what organic food really means. The vast majority of farmers/producers have small holdings of about 10 h's, so the production levels are quite limited. Most resellers gather products from a number of producers and sell them under the same brand. A classic example is "Bendicte" from Krakow, they sell products from all over poland under their brand and operate a franchise system. There are a lot of foreign companies in Poland that produce only for the export market.

Can you explain - or give examples?


Er no?! not unless you eat all your "meals" for €3.99 in a pub or something.

"Side salad" is basically garnish anyway - it should not really be regarded as a component of the meal as such. If you want salad you need to order salad - not X with side salad.

In a proper restaurant you will get any and all varieties of salad and salad ingredients you can think of.

But I think it's fair to say that Poles do take their salads more seriously though - a few seem to come out at every meal which wouldn't necessarily be the case in the UK or Ireland.

Exactly. If I don`t eat salad every day, I am mad.

Ingredients from the fresh food market:

In the section of Southern California where I live, much of the area is still very rural. I like purchasing my fruits & veggies from local, organically grown farms & orchards.

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Just briefly for you.

F.e. many of the dairy products are not based on milk but on supplements of it in form of powder, flavour and colour. U think u consume sth because the taste etc. is familiar for u but actually it's fake.

Meat in mass productions is also modified in form, taste and flavour.

And so on and on and on....

Many of the big companies have laboratories which they need for food design. What do u think are they doing there?

Yes believe me, I know all about this - they are my customers (!)

Having said that I am fairly confident as to the organic or natural credentials of mush of the food I consume whether it is meat veg or dairy. It's not hard.

But the point is that you said that food in "western Europe" was more likely to be processed than in Poland - did you not?

There was an excellent talk on this subject:
ted.com/talks/lang/eng/william_li.html


I suspect you're half right :) Fermented/picked foods are a much larger part of the Korean, Japanese and Chinese diet than the Polish diet, and they don't have such high rates of cancer. But there is more and more evidence that smoked meats are really not very good for you.

More like 10.99 EUR, i havent had a pub meal in the UK for less than £5.99 for about 10 years with the average being around £14.99. The point being please stop exaggerating every point.


A garnish is deep fried leak, thinly sliced carrot, crowned onion even the list is endless. A side salad IS an integral part of the meal and not to confused with garnish. In Poland, in most restaurants its a very nice accompaniment that completes a meal.


Yes, and virtually all are based on lettuce, cucumber and tomato.


Based on the content of what you commented below i highly doubt that.



But i have to say this is the funniest post by you:

Not quite.

Mieso = meat
wedliny = deli meat (sliced ham, sausage, cured/marinated ham)

Wedliny are highly processed and contain lots of preservatives/additives - generally not very healthy but widely eating in poland for breakfast and the evening meal.

Overall i think polish food is increasingly becoming less natural. Powdered soup and those goroncy kubeks are flooding supermarkets.


Touché.

- but not more or even less than outside Poland. And all of them!


Of course I tried that, but now I wouldn't eat this 'food' even when very hungry. Dried/evaporated food is not bad (I mean like pemmican), but here there's too much chemicals.


-In what terms? It's often much better than many other European beef as there's generally more ecological farming in Poland.

Are you reading this Wroclawboy? ; )

Well therefore, again I ask you - are you saying that your cured meat has not been processed? at all?

I doubt it very much.


So why is it so hilarious?

If someone says they are having "meat" for dinner you will expect slaughtered animal flesh from a butcher to be on your plate - not smoked, coloured, salted, preserved, water injected pinkish purplish sliced stuff. That's what I mean.

Although that covers a broad spectrum what you listed above is for the most part totally natural, its the processed meats which many have issue with, so basically a load of meat mixed with a blender then re set with additives and preservatives.

Just to clarify the point even more:

Cured = salted, smoked, hung as a way of preservation

Marinated = mixed with other ingredients before and during cooking in order to flavour meat

Processed = meat liquidized then reset with additives and preservatives

Its quite easy to distinguish, just stick to buying ham with the normal fatty lines and that looks like its been cured or marinated as an actual cut.

Er. You are wrong there Olaf. Slavic, Germanic and Scandinavain countries maybe - but not many other places in Europe.

I haven't eaten wędliny in Poland for a dinner. It is mainly ised for sandwiches, for breakfast, supper, or on a big plate. Only exception being addition of kiełbasa in e.g. bigos or some soups.

So when I say I'm having meat for dinner I'd probably have a steak, pork chop, kottbullar (minced meat balls) etc.

Yes, i read it and was replying at the same time you were.


Depends which way you look at it, cured meats date back from the stone age, processed in my mind (as listed above) means blitzed then re set.


Because the majority of meat bought in the UK is absolute pants, unless your able to pay lots of money for the good stuff, you'll be getting crap. Virtually all the supermarkets have taken the flavour out of British meat and replaced it with money making tasteless, steroid injected cancer causing, bland tripe.


Im just talking about hams, the deil variety.

Listen when i have meat for dinner, its meat, turkey, pork or chicken mainly, on the bone off the bone what ever, usually roasted. The cured and marinated variety covers only the deli sliced products. Did you visit a butchers whilst in Poland, you cant miss the amount of hams and chickens ready to be sliced, in the UK its very limited on that front.

It depends what and where you are buying. If you go on a market place then you can buy something unprocessed straight from the butcher. If you go to Tesco or Biedronka... well no wonder that food sucks.

My dad do on his own cold meats (buys a raw meat and bakes it, sometimes smokes it). We also do sometimes our own pickles. You can buy natural honey from bee-keeper (in stores there is pretty often an artificial honey).

The EU regulations give the producers of cold meats the opportunity to add more preservations than in polish previous regulations. That's why now there is a great decline of polish food quality. Polish food really used to be more natural in the past but now we have the same food like elsewhere.

OK, a few things.

Firstly I don't live in the UK.

Secondly, yes, I can (if I wish - which I don't) get a pub lunch for €3.99 - so please don't accuse me of exaggerating.

I can and do buy excellent meat/veg that was grown/picked/slaughtered locally (within 10 miles or so) and it's not ususual to be able to do so where I live.

In your post above Wroclawboy you are referring to supermarket meat - which is awful, yes. But isn't supermarket meat everywhere awful? Anyone who relies on supermarkets for quality meat needs their head examined.

Look, the point of thread is that Polish food is still (still if you don't mind, as if it were never any other way) "more natural" than in the west. It's just a ridiculous smug and naive assertion.

McDonalds in £ódz was packed all the time when I passed it. Pizza seems incredibly popular in Poland. I cannot BBQ the average Polish sausage as the water and fat content turns it into a firework and yes, there seems to be a large quantity of sliced processed hams and pickled/salted/smoked stuff on the average Polish table as far as I can see.

And yes, not much in the way of actual lumps of animal flesh.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about Polish food - I like it, but just don't be under this illusion that it's all so healthy. And to claim as one poster did that something (a Polish foodstuff) was 'almost all chemicals' but probably still tastes natural to westerners compared to what they usually eat is just silly and insulting.

Exactly!!! Depends what and where you buy. I buy from a bucher, and what I usually see at hypermarkets... looks different than good meet.

Which is the same the world over