I have an important message for couriers working on civil-law contracts. Announcing that their contracts will be terminated soon will not stop our inspections, and wherever justified, we will issue orders to convert these contracts into proper employment — and if that doesn’t work, decisions mandating such conversion.

An old commie, PZPR-bred, and the best thing this coalition has done. A pro with years in the labour inspectorate behind him. Chief Labour Inspector Janusz Krasoń. He’s practically opening his time in the job with this declaration. He’s been head of the National Labour Inspectorate for barely 3 weeks. And he’s already got on the wrong side of some 250 billion dollars. Because that’s what the companies offering so-called platform work, like Just Eat Takeaway, are valued at.

And however important and needed these words are for the workers of Just Eat Takeaway’s Polish arm, Pyszne.pl — it’s deeds that count.

On 22 July, the National Labour Inspectorate launched an inspection at Pyszne.pl, which decided to sack 5,000 couriers and have them hired through fleet partners.

The corporation’s decision, contrary to fairly common belief, wasn’t triggered by the inspectorate’s new powers.

Last year Lieferando, the German arm, sacked 2,000 couriers; in April the layoffs hit the Netherlands.

These are attempts to shield themselves — practice will show how well — from the consequences of the platform work directive the workers fought for and won.

It covers more than delivery couriers, but they’re the most active trade group in the fight against this pathology.

One of the platforms’ basic strategies is shifting costs and risk onto the workers.

In delivery you have to buy the bag, pay to rent a bike from the very company you work for (sic!)…

If the platform directive gets implemented properly, practices like these will be eliminated, or at the very least seriously curbed.

That’s exactly why the Pyszne.pl case matters so much.

It’s the first big employment inspection since inspectors got the power to convert illegal civil-law contracts into Labour Code ones (employment contracts), and the first clash for the new European law recognising platform workers… as workers.

To put it a bit more precisely: the law recognises that with platforms an employment relationship exists, and so an employment contract should be signed.

And all the labour-rights regulations matter — the ones that don’t protect people on civil-law contracts.

It’s not just the right to holiday, but the rules on working in high heat, on days off, or at night.

And yes, of course, if someone thinks they’ll have to pay more for a delivered pizza (or kebab). They will. And very good.

Because there’s always a chance they won’t order at all — they’ll take a walk instead or cook for themselves (if they can manage), and either way that’s better for their fitness and health. And if plenty of people do that, then thanks to the effect of scale it’s a win for public health and takes a bit of weight off the health service.

And of course the delivery business could take a big hit. And very good. If a company can’t offer decent working conditions and decent pay, better it goes under.

But customers won’t stop eating. This isn’t buying new gear, a phone or a car. Where maybe I’ll wait for a sale. Or won’t buy at all, too pricey.

We have to eat every day. And customers who don’t buy food through a platform will buy it elsewhere.

And it’s not the case either, whatever some loudmouths say, that people doing courier work dreamed of this career path and have plenty of better options.

Well, they don’t. That’s why they work in delivery. Or stack supermarket shelves, or sit at the till.

Poland is a country where these Morlocks were, after ’89, stripped of their rights with premeditation — the cornerstone being the anti-union law of May ’91, in which the new elites cut back trade union rights, starting with the unions’ most important weapon: the strike. A grim paradox of Polish history, that the people who came to power thanks to striking workers stripped those workers of their rights.

And it’s probably just a coincidence, mere timing, but I’d like to think it’s something more — that the new Chief Labour Inspector began his reign not long after the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, called a socialist by just about everyone, whether with hatred or delight, backed the Starbucks union workers right after his win.

We will leave no one without our support. I hope this gives food for thought to businesses planning moves that hurt their employees. The rules apply to everyone equally and we will make no exceptions in applying them.

Janusz Krasoń

And here’s one of the life-saving tricks for the kitchen in summer

Cold soup for a heatwave — ingredients and method

INGREDIENTS:

• 400 g soy yoghurt
• 150 g cucumber
• 20 g mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1–2 tsp sugar or other sweetener
• 1–2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 50 g tofu
• 30 g oil

METHOD:

Blend the yoghurt, cucumber, mustard, salt, sugar, tofu and juice together.

While blending, slowly pour in the oil

NOTES:

Oil obviously doesn’t mix with yoghurt, which is mostly water.

But both soy and mustard contain lecithin, an emulsifier, which is why blending lets you mix the oil thoroughly into the water. Exactly the same mechanism is used for making mayonnaise from soy milk

SERVING:

Best straight from the fridge. If it’s really hot, you can serve it with ice cubes

How hot does a kitchen actually get in summer?

In summer I look at the weather forecast with more dread than at a child-support summons.

The kitchen is always at least a few, usually ten degrees hotter than outside. Lucky me that during the last heatwave, when it hit 38°, we had no guests. And for the next event the forecast says a fairly moderate twenty-something degrees.

On top of the heat in the kitchen there’s high humidity. For ****’s sake, no need to fly to exotic countries, you’ve got the tropics right there at work.

And of course kitchens have extractor hoods over the stove, but when it’s hot outside, they mainly pull out the water and oil vapour from above the pots, and the particles rising from them while you cook — the temperature barely drops.

How do you cool down in a hot kitchen?

If you can’t cool the room, you can cool yourself. A water spray bottle, say, or soaking your cap. But the king of these methods is the wet T-shirt.

The best way to cool down in a hot kitchen is a wet T-shirt, soaked in cool water.

What counts as real work?

That’s the kitchen. Hard, tough, chop or die… That’s proper work, not ******* about with nonsense.

This is what I’d do, I’m no techno-utopian, but I believe in what technology can do and it could already be done:

First, an hour of hard work, not necessarily in a kitchen. A tram driver doesn’t have it easy either, or a Lidl checkout girl (even now they no longer have to wear nappies to work). And only then an hour of ******* about with nonsense.

Most of the intelligentsia and LinkedIn experts, if they swung a shovel for a few hours, wouldn’t have the strength left for ******* about with nonsense online. The strength would be with working people, the grafters, for whom 8 hours of ******* graft is the norm.

By the way, I’ve got a second point for the definition of what real work is.

Reminder of the first: real work is work your smartwatch registers as a workout

The second: work during which you’ve no time for ******* about with nonsense online.

So is your job real work, or at best a bullshit job?

Or, the horror, are you a LinkedIn expert?

Questions you’d ask anyway

What thickens a cold soup without cream?
Nothing. Tofu and soy yoghurt bring the body themselves, and the oil driven in by the blender turns it into an emulsion. You control the thickness with the tofu — more tofu, thicker soup.

Why doesn’t the oil separate from the yoghurt?
Because soy and mustard contain lecithin. That’s an emulsifier — it holds fat and water together, exactly like in mayonnaise. Pour the oil in slowly with the blender running.

How do you cool down in a kitchen that hits 38°C?
A wet T-shirt soaked in cool water. A spray bottle and a soaked cap work too, just not as long. The extractor hood pulls out vapour, not temperature.

What is a bullshit job?
David Graeber’s term — a job the person doing it considers pointless. My two tests: real work is work your smartwatch registers as a workout, and work that leaves you no time for the internet.

Read next:

• How to Avoid Food Poisoning in Summer — heat isn’t only about discomfort
• Five Dark Sides of Working in a Kitchen — the long version of “chop or die”
• Plant-Based Yolk Sauce — same mustard emulsion, different job
• More soups

In our kitchen world, the best motivation for good work is a good tip. If you like my recipes, leave me a tip

My social media

I’m joking, of course. It’s hard to keep a straight face about something like this. But on the other hand, the issue is more important than it might seem at first glance.

What am I talking about?

The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 14 June 2017, Case C-422/16:

“Purely plant-based products may not, in principle, be marketed under names such as ‘milk’, ‘cream’, ‘butter’, ‘cheese’ or ‘yoghurt’, which EU law reserves for products of animal origin. This also applies where such names are supplemented by clarifications or descriptions indicating the plant-based origin of the product.”

So what exactly should I call my creation?

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 litres of soy milk (or more)
• Yogurt starter culture (according to the instructions on the package)
• 1 tablespoon of sugar (if using unsweetened soy milk)
• Juice of one lemon

METHOD

Bring the soy milk to a boil—carefully, because soy milk foams up even more enthusiastically than cow’s milk. Let it cool down.

Add the yogurt culture. If the milk is unsweetened, add a tablespoon of sugar and stir.

Pour the milk into a yogurt maker (see notes) and leave it running for at least eight hours, until you get the consistency of a strongly fermented yogurt.

Transfer the finished yogurt to a pot, add the lemon juice, and heat gently over very low heat for 20–30 minutes, without exceeding 70°C (158°F). Do not let it boil!

After a while, a clearly visible curd will form. Carefully pour everything onto a cloth-lined sieve and leave it to drain. Once most of the liquid is gone, wrap the curd in the cloth and squeeze firmly.

VARIATIONS

You can also use lime juice, citric acid, or even mild vinegar to curdle the protein. The important thing is the acidic environment.

You can make this forbidden dairy alternative from any plant milk with a reasonably high protein content. In Germany, for example, pea milk is available (I’ve already made yogurt from it), as well as lupin milk, which I still need to try.

NOTES

You’ll need a yogurt maker.

You can also make the yogurt in many bread machines using the fermentation programme or in multicookers that have a dedicated yogurt setting. The key is maintaining a temperature of 40°C (104°F) for an extended period, allowing the bacteria to do their work.

The finished cheese is a bit drier than traditional Polish cottage cheese, probably because soy milk contains far less fat. Next time I want to add some fat—perhaps avocado oil. The challenge will be creating a stable emulsion so that the oil mixes properly with the plant milk.

SERVING

Serve it exactly as you would traditional cottage cheese: with radishes, chives, tomatoes, or yogurt. Use it as a filling for pancakes or savoury crêpes. It also works beautifully fried with onions and served with pasta.

Back in 2017, the CJEU ruled that terms such as soy cheese, plant milk, or soy cottage cheese were illegal within the European Union.

An even more absurd proposal followed: Amendment 171, debated in the European Parliament. It would not only have banned dairy-related names but also packaging resembling traditional dairy cartons, visual representations evoking cheese wheels or milk splashes, descriptive phrases such as “buttery” or “plant-based alternative to yogurt,” and perhaps most ridiculously of all, even claims about the lower carbon footprint of plant-based products compared with animal ones.

Fortunately, that nonsense, heavily backed by dairy lobbyists, was rejected. The same happened to Amendment 165, which would have prohibited terms such as plant-based burger, vegan sausage, and probably even the plant-based blood sausage I tried in Poland recently—which, to be fair, was surprisingly decent.

But the issue goes much deeper than simply mocking bureaucrats or criticising agricultural lobbies.

Ironically, these amendments reveal a split within the meat and dairy industries themselves. Some companies are desperately trying to stop the plant-based trend, while others are enthusiastically embracing it.

One common argument against terms like soy milk, vegan cheese, or plant-based burgers is that these products have always been animal-based and that such names never existed historically.

That is simply wrong.

Centuries ago, people already made almond milk, almond cheese, and fig sausages.

And in more recent history, Polish vegetarian cookbooks offer countless examples. Kosowska’s Vegetarian Cookbook from 1929 contains recipes for Viennese cutlets made from oats. In One Hundred Lenten and Vegetarian Dishes, by the immensely popular interwar author Pani Elżbieta (Elżbieta Kiewnarska), we find cutlets made from beans, peas, root vegetables, carrots, spinach, fennel, buckwheat, potatoes, rice, lentil loaves, and even bean cheese.

The more fundamental question is this:

What actually makes a burger a burger? Or cottage cheese, cottage cheese?

Is it the ingredients alone? Or does the product’s function on the plate and the method by which it is made matter as well?

I made my soy cottage cheese using exactly the same process as traditional cottage cheese. Its essential component is also the same: coagulated protein.

Yes, I quite like the playful alternative name sorozhek that I once encountered somewhere. But honestly, there is no good reason why a product made from plant protein should be denied the name cottage cheese simply because the protein comes from soybeans instead of cows.

And beyond all that—last but not least—this kind of evolution happens in cooking all the time.

It is one of the fundamental reasons why culinary culture develops.

Recipes change over centuries. Today’s Polish bigos bears little resemblance to its original form, which consisted almost entirely of meat with perhaps some apples and onions. Frankfurters were originally made only from pork. Chicken ham is a modern invention. By definition, ham meant pork. A hamburger was beef and beef alone.

There is absolutely no reason to erect absurd bureaucratic barriers against culinary creativity or to preserve recipes as if they were sacred standards locked away in Sèvres.

The beauty of cooking lies precisely in constant change, experimentation, and improvement.

Without that, cuisine becomes a museum.

And while spending a day or two in a living-history village, playing “How Our Ancestors Lived,” can be tremendous fun, nobody would actually want to spend their entire life there.

Even the increasingly popular movement of culinary reconstruction in Poland isn’t about reproducing old dishes exactly as they once were. We cook on different stoves, with different ingredients, under completely different circumstances. Reconstruction is really about creating something new: interpretations and arrangements inspired by historical flavours.

Plant-based cooking is particularly fascinating in this regard. By its very nature, it deconstructs traditional meat dishes, recreating familiar flavours from entirely different ingredients.

And then it goes one step further, transcending the original and using it merely as a point of departure for new explorations of taste and texture.

Any attempt to limit that imagination and creativity is a crime greater than extinguishing a star.

How do I know? I do my homework — no smoke and mirrors. Here are the receipts.

“Something cold with caffeine!”

That’s what I asked for on Saturday at a restaurant in Hamburg.

And what I got tasted so good that I created my own version of a matcha latte. Or maybe more of a smoothie.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 litre of soy milk (or any other plant milk)
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 2 small ripe bananas (see Notes)
• 1 heaped tablespoon (15 g) of matcha
• 3 tablespoons (30 g) of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

METHOD:

Keep all the ingredients in the fridge for at least two hours beforehand—especially the soy milk and coconut milk—so everything is nicely chilled.

Blend all the ingredients together in a high-speed blender for a few minutes, until the drink becomes slightly whipped and frothy.

VARIATIONS:

You can add cinnamon or ginger. Instead of bananas, you can use mango or other fruits. Just remember that different fruits will affect the colour.

NOTES:

The best bananas for this are the ones nobody wants to buy at the supermarket. The more brown spots they have, the riper and sweeter they are.

SERVING:

Serve in a tall glass with plenty of ice cubes.

I bought a packet of matcha some time ago, more for experiments than for drinking. I wanted to use it for colouring things, like the icing for Queen Elizabeth’s cake. (I really need to write that recipe down properly and publish it.)

During the French Revolution, I would have been the kind of person making sure the guillotine didn’t jam. But when it comes to cake, I have to admit that the World’s Most Aristocratic Alcoholic had excellent taste.

Although whether she could actually taste anything is another matter. Two hundred grams of alcohol every day doesn’t just damage your brain—it dulls your sense of taste as well. Even when you’re technically sober, your brain remains permanently fogged by alcohol.

I lived like that for a while. Aristocrats live like that all the time. A bunch of degenerate bastards. Elite degenerates!

Matcha used to be elite as well. It was available only to the upper few percent of society: feudal lords, the shogun, aristocrats, and courtiers.

Producing matcha is far more labour-intensive and expensive than making ordinary green tea. Two key elements make the process particularly demanding and costly.

And, just as today, the people doing that work could rarely afford to drink such tea themselves.

The first factor is the special shading structures built over the tea plants so they mature in the shade. This increases chlorophyll levels and gives matcha its beautiful green colour.

Another defining characteristic of matcha—and the reason this recipe produces a smooth suspension rather than loose tea leaves—is the fineness of the grind.

Matcha is traditionally ground in slow-turning stone mills into a powder measuring just 5 to 10 micrometres—that is, thousandths of a millimetre.

Today, both shading and grinding are much easier and faster than they were a century ago. That has democratised matcha, making it available to many more people.

But it has also created a paradox that appears in many areas, including overtourism.

Democratisation means accessibility for everyone.

And that accessibility can threaten the very quality and traditions that made something popular in the first place.

You cannot expand production indefinitely, especially in a country like Japan, where land is scarce.

I imagine there are quite a few Japanese people complaining about the “white dogs”—or whatever equally colourful term they use for Westerners—because all these foreigners are drinking the matcha that used to be reserved for tea ceremonies.

At this rate, we’ll soon see tea-ceremony militias in traditional robes carrying banners saying:

“Matcha for the Japanese!”

A few years ago, I would have called that an absurd idea.

These days, not so much.

And I still have plenty of matcha left, so I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more interesting things to do with it.

One glass of cold water (250 ml)
One tablespoon of coffee (or however much you normally use for a single serving)

Stir it and leave it for 12 hours.

The easiest way is to make it in the evening while preparing dinner and put it in the fridge. Make sure it’s covered or sealed so it doesn’t absorb other smells. By morning, it’ll be ready.

And that’s it—you’ve got cold brew coffee, brewed without heat. I think it’s a fantastic drink, but try it yourself and see what you think.

Of course, you can take it further in all sorts of ways—for example, by adding orange juice.

Add orange juice in an amount equal to about one-third to one-quarter of the coffee. Sweeten if you like. I added two tablespoons of agave syrup to roughly two litres, but if it gets too sweet, it loses some of its character.

Throw in a few ice cubes if you have them, and you’re good to go.

The same is true of Ilex paraguariensis, the Paraguayan holly used to make yerba mate. Today, Poland is among Europe’s leading consumers of yerba, and the Polish history of this herb stretches back… 160 years!

And that’s a good thing, because yerba is packed with nutrients and gives you a better boost than coffee. It can be a perfect drink for a party—not just on New Year’s Eve—but also for… dealing with the hardships of the following day.

Basic Version

INGREDIENTS:

• 50 g of yerba mate (2–3 handfuls)
• 5 g of dried lemongrass or two fresh stalks
• 300 ml of orange juice
• 2–3 tablespoons of sugar

PREPARATION:

Pour 750 ml of hot water (not boiling!) over the yerba mate. The ideal temperature is between 70–80°C (158–176°F). Leave it to cool slowly.

Once it has cooled, add the orange juice and two or three tablespoons of sugar and stir.

Strain through a sieve and top up with cold water to make 1.5 litres in total.

VARIATIONS:

Instead of pure orange juice, you can use a mixture of two parts orange juice and one part lime juice.

NOTES:

The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of the juice. The sweeter the juice, the less sugar you’ll need. Personally, I don’t sweeten drinks like this, but considering the trials of the following day, some quick energy from simple carbohydrates is definitely welcome.

You can brew the leaves two or three more times.

Yerbanada—not just for a hangover.

Yerbanada Tereré

INGREDIENTS:

• 50 g of yerba mate
• 10 ice cubes
• Cold water
• 250 ml of orange juice
• 2–3 tablespoons of sugar

PREPARATION:

Boil the water beforehand and chill it in the fridge until it reaches just a few degrees above freezing.

Add the ice cubes to the yerba mate and pour over one litre of cold water.

Leave it in the refrigerator for one or two hours.

Add the orange juice and sweeten to taste.

VARIATIONS:

As above.

NOTES:

As above.

Tereré has a milder flavour than hot-brewed yerba.

Almond Yerbanada

INGREDIENTS:

• 50 g of yerba mate
• A batch of orgeat prepared according to this recipe
• 2–3 tablespoons of sugar

PREPARATION:

Prepare it in much the same way as the tereré version. Pour the cold orgeat over the yerba mate and ice cubes. Leave it in the refrigerator for an hour, strain, and sweeten if necessary.

This version is the mildest and the most nutritious.

A Little Moment at Momencik Backstage

I invented my first yerbanada during one rather eventful Sunday at Momencik (a vegan taco and burrito place—highly recommended).

The Saturday before, to quote an obscure youth band, “nothing ever went the way it should.”

The owner and I had been preparing food production from six or seven in the morning. Shortly before opening time, the girl who was supposed to work the bar called to say she was sick, had a fever, diarrhoea, every ailment imaginable, and was basically dying.

Shit happens, as philosophers say.

Not long afterwards, Feli—the owner—managed to slice his hand with a knife so badly that he nearly cut off a finger. Luckily, there was an emergency station nearby.

Unfortunately, bilocation remains the privilege of only a few saints and yogis, so running both the kitchen and the bar at once was rather difficult.

Thankfully, we managed to call Sasha in. Sasha had arrived from Moscow just a few days earlier, and his Polish wasn’t exactly great. So I took over the bar while he ran the kitchen.

And that’s how we kept going until 10 p.m.

After sorting out the cash register—and without even cleaning the dining room—I got home sometime after eleven.

At six in the morning, I was back in the kitchen.

My main thought was:

“FOR F*’S SAKE! How am I going to survive this day?”**

Necessity being the mother of invention, I bought some bagged yerba mate with lime from the shop next door, brewed it, added orange juice and sugar, and served it to the customers.

And most importantly—to myself.

All the Goodness Inside Yerbanada

Whether prepared hot or cold, yerba provides a wealth of nutrients and xanthines.

Xanthines are mild alkaloids with stimulating and relaxing properties. The best-known xanthine is caffeine, found in coffee, but yerba also contains theobromine (which is also present in cocoa and guarana) and theophylline.

It is rich in vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, C, and E, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulphur, and zinc.

All of this works wonders for what we politely call the morning-after syndrome.

The nutritional benefits of orange juice further enhance this therapeutic effect, while sugar provides an extra energy boost.

The Tsar, the Great Emigration, and “Herwa Mate”

So what about that political and Polish history of yerba mate?

No, this isn’t about a certain barefoot “cowboy,” but about Polish emigrants in nineteenth-century Brazil.

In the mid-1800s, the Brazilian authorities began recruiting European settlers. Emigration intensified after 1888, when slavery was abolished and workers were needed on rubber plantations.

It is estimated that around 150,000 Poles emigrated to Brazil during that period.

Today, the Brazilian Polish community numbers somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million people, depending on the source.

One of those emigrants was Teofil Rudzki. He inspired Edmund Woś-Saporski, a prominent activist within the Polish diaspora in Brazil, to export yerba mate to the Russian Empire under the name “herwa mate.”

Rudzki arrived in Warsaw with a small quantity of herwa in 1882.

His efforts were so successful that by early 1883 he had imported fifty barrels of mate from Brazil.

I couldn’t find any information on how many kilograms or litres that represented, but assuming each barrel held between 30 and 50 litres doesn’t seem unreasonable.

That was an impressive amount.

Ironically, this great success marked the beginning of the end.

The sudden popularity of mate caused an equally dramatic decline in tea consumption. The main importer of Chinese tea was Count Orlov, a man closely connected to the Tsarist court.

By 1884, the Count had successfully lobbied for high tariffs on Paraguayan holly, making the entire enterprise economically unviable.

And so yerba mate had to wait more than a hundred years before finally finding its permanent home in Poland.

The EU Breakfast Directive, which came into force on June 14, now requires precise labeling of honey blends, including the percentage share and country of origin of every honey used in the product.

The authoritarian European Union is also forcing us to eat… better jam.

From June 14 onward, jams must contain at least 45 grams of fruit per 100 grams of product. Previously, the minimum requirement was 35%.

Products manufactured and labeled before June 14 can still be sold until stocks run out or the products expire. In practice, that could mean until the middle of 2029.

This may actually be good news for jam lovers—many producers and wholesalers may want to clear out their higher-sugar jams as quickly as possible and offer substantial discounts.

But this absolutely broke my patriotic heart.

Because, as I wrote, I checked the jam I buy for my guests.

Then I looked online and, hell, I’ll even name the brands: Łowicz and bloody Herbapol—one of the most iconic brands in Polish history!

Those branded Polish jams contain 35% fruit—the absolute legal minimum that was allowed until June 14. The very least they could get away with.

And although I assume my readers are intelligent people, if anyone missed the irony: I’m genuinely happy that the European Union is imposing stricter standards on food producers.

What annoyed me was the comparison.

Because not only the organic mid-range jam I buy for breakfast guests, but even GUT&GÜNSTIG, Edeka’s cheapest store brand, contains 50% fruit!

Cheap German supermarket jam is of higher quality than premium Polish branded jam.

Not everyone is expected to know this, so let me explain: Poland is one of Europe’s fruit-producing powerhouses, alongside Italy and Spain. Spain’s position is boosted by its dominance in citrus production.

Germany, judging by the fields around me, mainly grows potatoes and rapeseed while importing huge quantities of fruit—much of it from Poland.

And yet they produce better, cheaper jams than we do.

Something here is clearly wrong, and I think the problem is on the Polish side.

What do you think?

This isn’t merely a difference between jams or even between economies. It’s a difference between states.

Producing the lowest-quality food products imaginable is, in many ways, the essence of post-1989 Poland.

It also says a lot about how markets in different countries will react.

If even the cheapest German jams already contain 50% fruit, nothing will really change there. But if branded Polish jams only contain 35%, prices will inevitably rise.

Manufacturers may also try to offset higher fruit costs through downsizing.

I wrote about this recently, particularly about the great success of an organization from Hamburg (of course—the best city in the world).

They may also reduce ingredient quality: more water, more gelling agents, more high-fructose corn syrup—which, personally, I dream of seeing banned across the EU.

Interestingly, the directive also introduces a new category: reduced-sugar fruit juices.

This is a classic example of public health and nutrition policy.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about it, because fruit juices aren’t the main problem. Sugary soft drinks, candy bars, and other junk food are.

A total EU-wide ban on junk-food advertising or a continent-wide sugar tax would probably achieve much better results.

Although when discussing sugar taxes, we should remember the EU paradox.

The European Union still subsidizes sugar beet production—meaning more sugar, and cheaper sugar. That makes sugar more abundant in processed foods, while governments simultaneously impose sugar taxes to cover the enormous and growing healthcare costs associated with excessive consumption.

But the fundamental issue here goes far beyond the quality of our jam or the price of sugary drinks.

It concerns our collective survival and quality of life as societies.

The increasing strain on healthcare systems is becoming one of the greatest challenges facing Western countries, largely because of aging populations.

Unless we improve overall public health, no amount of funding or private payments will save healthcare systems.

We need more hospitals, clinics, scanners, and beds—but also more doctors, nurses, and caregivers.

Future generations simply will not be able to provide enough healthcare workers, regardless of salaries.

Not everyone can—or should—become a doctor or an elderly-care worker. I say that from my own experience of working in care homes for two years.

The recommended daily intake of sugar should not exceed 25 grams, and generally, less is better. Fifty grams is considered the absolute upper limit.

Americans consume over 100 grams per day. Europeans consume between 60 and 120 grams.

Do you know what that means?

It means that as we grow older, more and more people around us develop insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, and all the diseases associated with obesity.

When I weighed almost 15 kilograms more than I do now, my work was far more exhausting, and I was much less productive. That represents another category of social costs caused by excessive sugar consumption.

Just as alcohol-related cases fill emergency rooms on weekends, the victims of sugar and highly processed food place pressure on healthcare systems 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The only way to save healthcare systems in developed countries is through social engineering—creating, encouraging, and sometimes even forcing large-scale lifestyle changes, particularly changes in eating habits.

That requires both interventionist measures and long-term health strategies that transcend political divisions.

I greatly admire British policy in this area—what Starmer’s government has done, building on initiatives originally introduced by the Conservatives.

It makes perfect sense.

If conservatism means caring about families and children, then policies such as sugar taxes should be among its core principles.

A preschooler’s diet should be tasty and healthy.

And everyone should be beautiful, rich, and healthy.

The difference is that the issue of diet has strong scientific backing.

A new study published in *Nutrients*, an international peer-reviewed open-access journal focused on human nutrition, has found a connection between children’s mental development and their diet.

The study, conducted by Norwegian researchers, aimed to identify links between personality traits and symptoms of depression and anxiety measured at age eight, and diet during the prenatal period and throughout childhood up to the age of eight.

The researchers used data from one of the world’s largest cohort studies, covering 41% of all pregnancies in Norway between 1999 and 2008. The project collected an enormous amount of data from 114,500 children, 95,200 mothers, and 75,200 fathers.

Every year, this database produces new discoveries and research findings.

And this is the answer to those who complain that dietary recommendations are always changing and that scientists keep changing their minds about what’s healthy and what isn’t.

Because the last few years have indeed brought an explosion of new discoveries in nutrition science.

This is largely thanks to new technologies and big data. Without them, analyzing datasets of this magnitude would simply be impossible.

By the way, it makes the researchers behind the American Nurses’ Health Study even more impressive. They had to process data from more than 200,000 nurses manually—letter by letter—when participants still mailed in paper questionnaires.

Today, data from that study and many others are being analyzed using artificial intelligence.

This is the moment when nutrition science is finally becoming fully evidence-based practice.

It’s worth remembering that evidence-based medicine is actually quite new.

EBM became standard practice in medicine only about thirty years ago, and in nutrition science roughly ten years later.

Evidence-based medicine means using the best available scientific evidence in clinical practice—not simply accepting something because a famous professor says so.

Two years ago, almost in the center of Hamburg, in a tunnel leading to Münzviertel, I nearly walked into two guys preparing a heroin injection.

A spoon. A lighter. A syringe.

Two of my close friends died from heroin addiction in the 1990s.

Now imagine you’re walking into a pharmacy.

You need a syringe for a medical injection. Or maybe for drawing blood for some magical potion.

And on the way you come across the syringe those guys left behind.

You wouldn’t stop, pick it up, and inject yourself with it.

Right?

Unless you’re already addicted enough that it no longer matters.

If you understand why that syringe is dangerous, you may feel the same unpleasant shiver I do whenever I see something like that.

Then you continue to the pharmacy.

In the mid-19th century, as many as one in four women giving birth in hospitals died.

Then one of humanity’s greatest forgotten heroes appeared: Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis.

The pioneer of evidence-based medicine discovered through observation and research that the key was… washing hands.

We cannot see bacteria or viruses.

The fact that you’re alive and reading this today owes a great deal to Semmelweis and the evidence-based approach he helped establish.

Thanks to it, women stopped dying in childbirth in such numbers.

And thanks to it, you know that using a dirty syringe left by drug users is a terrible idea.

Evidence-based medicine relies on a hierarchy of scientific evidence.

Even without studying research methodology in detail, common sense tells us that a Norwegian study involving more than one hundred thousand children carries different weight than a study of twenty people conducted over two months.

A fictional example—but you’ve certainly seen something similar.

Popular media outlets love finding a tiny study that nobody has replicated and presenting it as a revolutionary breakthrough.

Even more so do various self-proclaimed “critical thinkers” who claim to have “woken up.”

What they really need is a lesson in research methodology.

Because methodology is what allows scientists to analyze datasets as large as the Norwegian study.

So what does this research tell us about preschoolers’ diets?

Surprisingly simple things.

More fruits and vegetables: good.

More salty and sugary snacks: bad.

Children who ate fruits and vegetables more frequently showed fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and emotional problems.

Children who consumed more salty and sugary snacks showed more.

The authors acknowledge limitations, including an overrepresentation of highly educated families. They also note the possibility of reverse causation: children already experiencing mental health problems may eat more emotionally, consuming more sugar and fat and fewer fruits and vegetables.

Although the study found a clear association between healthy, varied diets rich in fruits and vegetables and better mental health outcomes, the researchers stress that further research is needed.

They also emphasize the importance of this issue from a public-health perspective.

The study concludes:

“Current adherence to dietary guidelines is low. Therefore, identifying ways to support young populations through structures and systems that influence children, such as early childhood education and primary healthcare services, as well as supporting parents in providing healthy diets, should be a public-health priority.”

The researchers further note:

“Mental health problems are costly both for individuals and society. Ensuring a healthy and varied diet early in life may support children’s mental health and provide substantial societal benefits. Methods to improve dietary habits in early childhood should therefore be identified through targeted intervention studies.”

And this is where politics enters the picture.

The implications for public-health policy are obvious.

They align closely with recent initiatives in the United Kingdom.

Importantly, there is broad political consensus on the issue. Efforts to restrict advertising of unhealthy foods began under the previous Conservative government.

One of the leading candidates to succeed Prime Minister Starmer is former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has strongly emphasized this direction of reform.

Whenever we discuss public health, it quickly becomes clear that private choices—such as what small children eat—become political issues when multiplied across an entire population.

This leads to policies such as restrictions on junk-food advertising.

And such decisions almost always run against the interests of some business lobby.

The tobacco lobby.

The alcohol lobby.

The junk-food lobby.

You can usually tell that a policy is moving in the right direction by the amount of noise and outrage it provokes from lobbyists and their sponsors.

Can you hear the howling?

Excellent.

Because although prices have already fallen on global markets, they fell from the record level of 4.40 USD per pound, due to forecasts of record coffee harvests in Brazil, which accounts for one-third of global coffee production.

But the exchange price and the retail shelf price are two completely different things.

Commodity market prices often concern future purchases of future harvests.

And this is the price for coffee that will be harvested up to September—meaning it will reach the market at the end of the year.

But that still doesn’t mean store prices will fall.

Coffee harvested in August will reach store shelves at the earliest in early 2027. From a price drop on the world exchange to lower prices in stores takes almost a year—effectively about a year and a half from now.

And it may even arrive only toward the end of 2027.

In the meantime, further disruptions may occur due to aggression against Iraq.

Because one-third of the world’s coffee harvests from India, Southeast Asia, and East Africa pass near the Strait of Hormuz.

Fuel costs are also rising, which affects even Brazilian coffee—because transporting products to customers becomes far more expensive.

And so do cultivation costs, including fertilizers, whose production depends heavily on natural gas.

So will record coffee harvests make your small black coffee cheaper?

There’s a chance—provided peace comes quickly to the Middle East.

Another issue is a practice we all know very well: when raw material prices rise, everyone raises their prices. Which makes sense.

But when raw material prices fall, somehow it’s much rarer for anyone to lower their prices.

So a drop in coffee prices on the exchange doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll pay less for your espresso.

And if you do—probably not for another year.