Better Health Is on the Menu in Poland

Some advice for the hearty meat eaters--practically every man, woman and child in Poland--was the first order of business.

“Don’t get nervous when I start talking about vegetarian cooking,” nutrition instructor Beata Sleszynska said. “It can be very interesting. Really.”

The packed classroom surrendered willingly. Ladies in feather hats, men with ponytails, grandmothers and businessmen were all craning to catch a glimpse of the curious substance in Sleszynska’s sparkling glass bowl.

“This is granola,” the teacher said. “It is made from dry flakes of different cereals. It has lots of vitamins and fiber. It is an excellent food for breakfast.”

A recipe flashed up on the wall. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped. Pens took to paper like fat to fire.

Tofu was next. Then sugarless jam. By evening’s end, 60 new foot soldiers in Poland’s nutrition revolution had entered basic training through a class sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventists.

A remarkable thing is happening in the land of smoked sausage, pork cutlets and deep-fried potato dumplings. People are suddenly eating better, smoking less, exercising more and--most significantly--living longer.

“It is incredibly exciting how quickly we have recovered from communism,” said Dr. Witold Zatonski, a Warsaw cancer specialist and author of one of several recent studies on Poland’s changing health. “Being healthy is beginning to become fashionable.”

Zatonski was among a host of prominent physicians who just a few years ago warned that Poland--along with the rest of the former Soviet bloc--had slipped into a health crisis of unheard-of proportions.

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Stoked mainly by the sudden availability of cheap alcohol and smuggled cigarettes, Poles and other Eastern Europeans went on a self-destructive binge after the political and economic changes of 1989. A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund two years ago said post-Communist stresses had contributed to increases in heart disease and suicide, posing “a clear threat to the political viability of the entire reform process.”

The state of health remains dire in many formerly Communist countries, particularly in Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union. For the next 25 years, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva, the region will experience the world’s highest rate of death among those ages 15 to 60. It is too early, officials say, to exclude Poland from that prediction.

But things appear to be getting better rather than worse in Poland. Amid all the bad health news in Eastern Europe, Poland’s turnabout has brought long-lost optimism.

“We are witnessing the beginning of an improved lifestyle, and I see no signs that habits will change back,” said Neil Collishaw, a WHO scientist who follows trends in Eastern Europe. “Hopefully, Poland is the harbinger of improvement in other countries as well, but that really remains to be seen.”

Since 1991, after dropping to startling lows during the turmoil of the late 1980s, the average life expectancy for Polish men has increased by 1 1/2 years and for Polish women, by more than a year.

In 1990, the odds of a 15-year-old Polish boy living to age 60, according to one study, was worse than the odds for his counterpart in India or Latin America.

Most remarkable is that not as many Poles are dying of heart disease, Poland’s main cause of death. Heart disease deaths are down about 25% among people in their 20s, 30s and 40s and about 15% among older Poles. Researchers say such a dramatic drop has never been recorded in peacetime Europe.

Smoking is down too. A series of public opinion surveys commissioned by the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology in Warsaw estimated that 1 million Poles quit smoking for at least one month after annual stop-smoking days beginning in 1992. Still among the world’s heaviest smokers, Poles have begun restricting cigarette advertising and smoking in public.

“People are interested in healthier living like never before,” said Anna Nawrocka, 49, who runs a grade-school cafeteria and is among the millions of Poles who have concluded that a changed lifestyle is the secret to longer life.

“It has come from the West,” she said. “We now have more information about the problems of poor health, and more kinds of foods are available to us.”

Nawrocka’s daughter, a university student in Warsaw, said healthy eating has swept college campuses like no other fad in Poland. As with many of her friends, Elzbieta Nawrocka, 24, prefers chicken and yogurt to cold cuts and other meats.

“For some people, it is a question of being fashionable, and as time goes on, they will move on to something else,” the younger Nawrocka said. “But I think there will be a group of people who will always really support it.”

A quick trip to the corner market provides a road map to the country’s dietary transformation.

One recent frosty morning, fresh vegetables and fruits--including bananas, oranges, grapefruits and kiwis--were as readily available as such Polish staples as potatoes, carrots and celery root. In a sign of the changing times, the consumption of so-called exotic fruits in the dead of winter last year was higher than during the dog days of August a decade earlier.

A look at the dairy counter is equally telling. Over the last five years, the choice of margarine--once derided as a poor man’s substitute for butter--has overwhelmed butter offerings. Researchers say the single biggest reason for the decline in heart disease is the extraordinary increase in margarine use, and a corresponding 40% drop in butter consumption.

“A substitution for animal fat is occurring in our diets,” said Dr. Lucjan Szponar, director of the Polish National Food and Nutrition Institute, which recently issued a study on food consumption. “Margarine for butter is the most obvious, but meat consumption is changing too. The portion of poultry meat has gone up by about a third.”

Why the sudden interest in better food?

“We are a real democracy,” Szponar said. “Before, people would rush to the doctor to get sick leave from work; now they are rushing to stay healthy. They know there are real benefits to being healthy.”

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Interest in the recent Adventist cooking class was so great that church officials had to ask some people to wait for an upcoming session. The church’s quit-smoking classes also draw regular crowds. Even some health and fitness clubs in Warsaw--a novelty in themselves--have begun to offer dietary and nutritional counseling.

The information is not always an easy sell.

At the cooking class, U.S.-trained Sleszynska raced through a dizzying array of dos and don’ts of better living. Drink lots of water. Don’t snack between meals. Chew your food. Stay away from strong spices. Eat at regular intervals. Eat slowly. Avoid very hot and very cold foods.

“No hot tea?” asked Krystyna Wegcinska, 70, who turned to healthier foods after undergoing a mastectomy. “I read that a cup of tea after eating fends off cancer.”

“Black tea is quite toxic,” Sleszynska replied pleasantly.

“Tea, toxic?!” a woman yelped from the back of the room.

“No! No!” the crowded room protested.

During a break from her teaching, Sleszynska said: “People are much more open to new ideas than even four years ago. This isn’t just about vegetarian cooking. It is about a whole new way of thinking.”