Polish Health

Poland

Blog Post No.4

2015-4-18

By Daniel Wojcik

If you want to eat Polish food, you're going to want to stop counting your calories.  Polish food is very hearty.  Meats, especially sausage, are a large part of the polish diet.  As Poland is one of the worlds largest producers of cereal crops, bread and various other wheat-based foods are very common as well.  Polish food has not changed a whole lot in recent memory, but in the past it has been influenced by other European cultures as I mentioned in my first post.  One of the largest influences was Italian food.  While domestic vegetables had seen some use beforehand, Italian cooks popularized the use of vegetables such as Celery Root, Lettuce, Leeks, and Cabbage during the Renaissance.  The Italian cooks had such a large influence that today some of these vegetables are known as włoszczyzna, which is derived from the Polish word for Italy.   

Some Polish foods are not as healthy.  Pierogi, the Polish national dish, are often fried.  Pączki, like I mentioned in my second post, are very popular, and not very healthy as you might expect from a doughnut.  However, in some ways Polish food is similar to American food.  While the preparation is vastly different, a lot of the ingredients are similar, so it's not hard to strike a balance between tasty and nutritious.