For the third time, the Day of Sustainable Development took place at the University of Gdańsk. Special lectures and workshops were organised on this occasion at the Faculty of Chemistry. The theme this year was water and its importance for life on the planet. Katarzyna Bosacka, a journalist, author of programmes on health and cooking, and special guest of the event at the UG talks about the state of consciousness of the Polish consumer and sustainability at home with Ewa Karolina Cichocka.

- You have been active and participated in many consumer awareness projects for years. Have we, as consumers, changed a bit during this time?

- We are changing a lot. When I started visiting grocery shops 12-13 years ago and carefully reading labels, it was almost impossible to find sausages with high meat content. Now we have ham sausages, chicken breast sausages, 100% meat sausages, 96 percent meat sausages, pork loin sausages without MSG or phosphates.

This is a huge leap in terms of consumer awareness and label reading. My colleagues call me Mother Teresa of the Polish grocer's, but it is not only thanks to me. It has become fashionable. Seven years ago, thanks to the broadcast of the programme I know what I eat, I know what I buy, there was an impulse on my part.

In the beginning, it was much more difficult. Today we have mobile phones, we can zoom in and see what is written on the product label. We also have consumer apps that help us. All the technology is there for us, all we have to do is reach into one of the applications and scan the products.

Knowing that the Polish consumer is educated, more and more shops try to reach out to him. Let us add that in Europe, Canada or the United States, it is hard to find someone who reads labels. No one there is particularly interested in such matters.

Years ago, when I was touching this subject, I did not realise that I was entering a no-man's-land. From the labelling side, the packaging side and from the shop shelf - this is a huge amount of consumer knowledge. Nobody has ever done it in Poland on such a scale as I have.

- Can we assume that an aware consumer influences not only the trader but also the producer? Have they changed because sausages without meat were not selling?

- Unfortunately, these sausages will continue to be sold, because it is a commodity from the so-called lowest shelf and it is very popular. For example, in my neighbourhood shop, Ms Beatka, whom I have known for years, tries to import goods according to the guidelines from my programmes. But even so, the gentlemen who work hard next door on the building site come in. They need to provide themselves with plenty of calories and they buy the cheapest pâtés and Kaiser rolls. There will always be a consumer geared to the cheapest shelf who eats whatever. This is usually a man under the age of 30. Later, when he starts a family and reaches his forties, he starts having problems with hypertension, heart disease, the beginnings of atherosclerosis or diabetes. Only then do you realise that you have to take care of what you eat!

The biggest consumer of powdered soups in Poland is a 20-year-old and a twenty-something-year-old student. These are very young people who do not yet think about and pay attention to the state of their arteries and their health in general.

- Is healthy eating a fashion or a necessity?

For me, a necessity, because I grew up in a culinary household. Healthy food was natural because it is delicious, fresh and tastes different.

I would like to quote some very interesting conclusions from research that I often refer to, conducted by prof. Bożena Cukrowska from the Child Health Centre on child nutrition. When it comes to the nutrition of the youngest, what matters today is not the first year after birth, but the first 1 000 days after conception. American studies show that if mothers reach for fast food during pregnancy, their children... will too. This is why what the mother eats is so important. If she eats just anything and anywhere during pregnancy, her children will not be inclined to eat healthily.

Today we have so many threats, such as smog, processed food, global warming and, above all, one of the highest rates in Europe of overweight, obesity and mortality from cardiovascular diseases. From this perspective, healthy eating is, therefore, a necessity. As much as a quarter of our well-being depends on the plate, which is a lot. The rest is genes, style, living conditions, whether you live in a successful relationship, whether you are stressed at work, etc. This is why cardiologists stress that our plate is extremely important.

- The theme of the UG conference, of which you are a special guest, is sustainability. Can this issue be transferred to domestic conditions?

- Many years ago, when ecology was still in its infancy, it was viewed negatively and even with some contempt. There was even a kind of crusade by celebrities who sat on red sofas on breakfast television and told us that they only washed in chestnuts, did not vaccinate their children and used rye flour to wash their hair. It was a certain extreme, which aroused a certain disgust towards ecology.

I believe that the approach should be common sense. If you don't know what you have to do for the planet, start by doing something for yourself and your children. Start drinking tap water, take a reusable bottle to the gym or for a walk and a reusable net for shopping. Remove plastic from your kitchen and use old-school jars. These are small steps and often don't cost anything, in fact, they save money. This is the case with water, for example.

It's worth focusing on your home. I've been drinking tap water for eight years. To have carbonated water, we bought a modern siphon. If we bought bottled water, we'd use 80kg of plastic a year, not to mention the expense. Tap water is cheap compared to bottled water and often has a better mineral composition.

- You participate in many undertakings related to a healthy lifestyle and consumer awareness. One of them was the 'City on Detox' campaign organised in Gdańsk.

- Yes, it was 3-4 years ago. I was then the face of this famous action. It was a very groundbreaking event for me. In my life, I have never learned so much about plastic! I think that Gdańsk is one of the best centres in Europe to study the impact of plastics. That's a lot of knowledge and I'm sharing it here at the university.

- We have a lot to think about and, above all, a lot to do. Thank you very much for the interview.

Ms Katarzyna Bosacka was a special guest at the invitation of the GIWK Company (partner of the Sustainable Development Day at the UG), and she is also an ambassador of the educational campaign conducted by GIWK as part of the international microplastics project FanpLESStic-sea. The coordinator of the campaign 'City on Detox' is GIWK. More about the campaign at: https://miastonadetoksie.pl/

Photo: Piotr Wajda