Food Research Institute

His answer to the question was:

„1. Before the year 1989 we indeed eaten differently, so it is very hard to compare foodstuffs which were in the market 30 years ago and the foodstuffs we can buy nowadays. Czechoslovak foodstuffs were indeed fresh, especially vegetables and fruit, we could say the same about meat and various meat or milk products. However, the assortment of food goods available was very limited. During that time, the consumers used a lot of basic foodstuffs, because top grade processed food was not available. People relied on foodstuffs mostly that they cultivated by themselves, especially vegetables, fruit and there were also ways how to sell the excess produce. Rural areas had a lot of swine farms (with annual pig slaughtering), poultry and various other animals. Food found its way faster to the consumer; it was of traditional origins and produced locally. Slovakia also had rather strict safety and quality regulations, which were slowly directed to unified market when joining EU, which unified requirements for food, especially its quality. At this time as early as Slovakia had a database of contaminants and foreign substances available, although the detection methods used were of lower standards worldwide, so we can’t exactly make any conclusions about „healthier“ food.

2. Fatal mistake was the loss of independence in food production. Food producers have a very tough situation considering the lack of local ingredients, strong technological liability and the pressure on the pricing ranges that modern supermarkets create. This created a huge opportunity to import food, many times of lower quality and in dumping prices. These problems were caused by allowing access to the market to an uncontrollable amount of foreign companies, which took over the food market in Slovakia.