It takes a bit of flour, some milk and a couple of eggs to make pancakes at home.
A recipe of frozen blinis sold in supermarkets is, however, somewhat different: egg powder, water, coloring agents and some artificial preservatives to make them last a few months.
Pancakes, consumed in large amounts over Pancake Week, or Maslyana, which ended on March 6, is just one example of convenience foods that’s been sweeping Ukraine over the last five years. Overwhelmed with an increasing pace of life, many Ukrainians moved their health issues to the back burner.
As a result, the number of people with obesity problems has grown as fast as home fridges get stuffed with more boxes of readymade food. What’s more, they seem to be eating more and moving less nowadays as many of them now have cars and are walking less as they did in Soviet days.
Nutritionists don’t blame just frozen blinis, but point to them as part of a clear trend.
A woman buys readymade pancakes in Silpo supermarket in Kyiv on Feb. 28. (Oleksiy Boyko)
Contrary to Soviet days, when the average Ukrainian was thin and pale, “half of our population [now] has excessive weight,” said Natalia Samoilenko, a nutritionist from the state-funded Kyiv Health Center. “Every fifth Ukrainian suffers from obesity,” she said.
“Flour and water [blinis’ basic components] don’t carry any serious threat themselves besides being high on calories,” said Samoilenko. “However, producers can add preservatives that prolong the life of dough and ingredients of vegetable origin, which are not quite natural, instead of eggs and milk.”
If companies ignore sanitary guidelines, various intestinal bacteria can easily find their way in and “grow and thrive in such micro flora,” added Samoilenko.
Valentyn Bezrukiy, president of the non-profit food safety and inspection service Test, however, repels the nutritionists’ concerns. Six different brands of pancakes with cottage cheese – widely available in Ukrainian supermarkets – were tested in his laboratory and returned positive results.
But nutritionist Samoilenko still “votes for home-made pancakes” to preserve the Ukrainian habit of organic eating. Clearly, the temptation to make pasta in three minutes or grab a pancake to go is strong, but the rush often offsets diets and leads to health problems.
Whatever the case, marketing company TNS Ukraine found that 40 percent of Ukrainian respondents prefer buying pancakes and dumplings to cooking them at home and, astonishingly, more than one third of those polled said they eat them twice or three times a week. That’s the kind of statistics businessmen are happy to serve.
Vladyslav Bulochkin, the sales director of Kordelia catering, which delivers business lunches to Kyiv offices, said they added pancakes to their menus after numerous requests during Maslyana holiday.
“It costs only Hr 1 to make a pancake,” said Bulochkin. “But we sell [a plain pancake without any filling] for Hr 2.3. The ones with caviar sell for Hr 13 and with jam for Hr 6.”
Supermarket chain Fozzy Group stated that since 2008 sales of pre-cooked pancakes during Maslyana week has grown at least 1.5 times compared to non-holiday periods.
Maslyana, the pagan holiday of saying “Good Bye” to winter and remade by Christians into the last week before Lent, is a popular time to eat pancakes – a symbol of the sun. However, despite the old age of this tradition, Ukrainians as of late seem to prefer a modern way of celebrating – by eating readymade cakes.
Kyiv Post staff writer Irina Sandul can be reached at [email protected]
