Romanian cuisine from past to present
• Romanian cuisine has a wide variety of meat and dairy products, distinguished for their taste, the flavors used and the cooking techniques.
• Due to cultural interaction, Romanian cuisine has Balkan, German, Serbian, Italian and Hungarian influences, and, as we all know, worldwide taste diversity and cooking refinement are highly appreciated by the connoisseurs of peoples’ traditions.
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Due to its daco–roman legacy, Romanian cuisine inherited various culinary traditions: From the Romans we have the pie (plăcinta), a word that kept the original form of the Latin word placenta, The Turks brought us the meatball sour soup (ciorba de perişoare), The Greeks gave us the moussaka (musaca), From the Bulgarians we have a wide variety of vegetable dishes, such as zacusca, And the schnitzel (şniţel) comes from the Austrians.
• One of the staple foods in Romania is polenta (mămăliga). It is made with corn flour, water and salt, and sometimes with whey, butter or cheese, depending on the final dish for which it is used. It was an everyday dish for farmers, as it used to replace bread during the pre-industrial period, when bread was manually made in each house.
Romanian cuisine - nowadays
Nowadays, there is a constant trend of
Nowadays, there is a constant trend of mixing the world’s cuisines. Not only do we eat in exotic foreign-style restaurants, but we also try to cook foreign dishes in our homes.
Romanian’s main favorite dishes The main favorite dishes in Romania are: Soups
Potato dishes
Pork, beef, chicken
Sarmale (cabbage rolls)
Dairy products
Pastele Pasta
Fruit and vegetables
BREAD is a must for breakfast, lunch or dinner For breakfast, lunch or dinner, bread is the most popular food item for most Romanians. For dessert, less than 5% of Romanians choose fruits. Most of them eat cookies, pies, ice-cream, pancakes, doughnuts or chocolate. As for Romanian’s favorite fruits, apples and bananas are the most popular, followed by pears, oranges and grapes.
Among vegetables, tomatoes and cucumbers are the most popular, followed by potatoes, onion and beans. Only 35% of Romanians eat their favorite vegetables daily, and 4% of them seldom eat any vegetables.
Natural juices (lemonade, elderflower juice), and carbonated drinks are preferred to tea and beer when it comes to favorite drinks.
Due to our changing lifestyle habits and lack of time, more and more Romanians choose fast food. When it comes to fast food restaurants, Romanians prefer KFC, McDonald’s and Subway.
Another dish with increasing popularity among Romanians is shawarma. This Arabic dish has as a main ingredient meat: lamb, chicken, turkey or beef, served with vegetables, pickles, various dressings and spices. All the ingredients are wrapped in pita bread.
Fast Food Effects “ Think twice before eating fast food ! “
• Fast food is the term given to food that is prepared and served very quickly in specific restaurants. In 2008, a study of the researchers from McMaster University Canada shows that fast food, rich in fats, salt and meat, is responsible for one third of the heart attacks registered worldwide.
• The researchers from California University concluded that each fast food menu increases the BMI (body mass index) by 0,03%.
FAST FOOD dishes, dishes responsible for one third of all heart attacks vinovate ď ś The price that you pay for a hamburger is much higher than what you see on the label. Eaten regularly, these products can kill you, says Salim Yusuf, a medical professor at McMaster University in Canada. He declared that fast food is the cause of one third of all heart attacks recorded worldwide.
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Eating fast-food also negatively affects memory, according to the researchers from Carolina University, USA. The excess of sugar and fat decreases the level of a substance in our brain with a key role in the learning and memorizing process.
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People who eat fast have three times more chances to become overweight than people who eat more slowly, shows a study of the researchers from Osaka University.
• Just one kebab contains almost one cup of oil, according to the researchers from Hampshire County Council, Great Britain. If you eat two portions of kebab each week, you face an increased risk for coronary heart disease.
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A simple hamburger contains between 250 and 350 kilocalories, which represents 15 20% of the daily Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA).
• Women spend, on average, 10 years of their lives on weight loss diets, according to a British study.
Organic Food
Organic foods •are produced using methods of organic farming – with limited modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, though organic pesticides are still used. Organic foods are also not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives. The organic farming movement arose in the 1940s in response to the industrialization of agriculture that became known in the 1960s as the Green Revolution.
Organic Food and Its Effects On Health
The main advantage of organic food is without a doubt absence of all non-natural ingredients but the benefits of organic food for health do not end here. Due to the fact that organic food products must not contain any artificial preservatives their shelf life is much shorter. This is particularly important when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables which start to lose nutritional value the moment they are harvested. In addition to direct health benefits, organic food offers a number of indirect but just as important positive effects on both human health and the environment.
So, what would you choose?