Are products in Poland worse than those in Germany? We go and check

4 marca 2023, 13:55 | Business Insider

| Mateusz Madejski

Shopping in Poland is still significantly cheaper than in Germany. Many people believe that it comes at a price. There is a stereotype that the products sold by companies in Poland are of lower quality. How much truth is there? We went to Germany and x-rayed the labels.

• We compared products sold by large food concerns both in Poland and Germany
• Most of the food products in Poland have the same composition as our neighbor’s. If a Pole has unhealthy ingredients in his products, a German also has them
• Sometimes, however, very similar goods are slightly different in both countries. However, this does not necessarily mean that companies save on Poles
• We screened dozens of products from different segments and different companies. Here are the results of our experiment
• More such information can be found on the Onet.pl home page

Inflation in Poland is growing much faster than in Germany. However, shopping on our website is still significantly cheaper, which we wrote about recently. Readers, however, pointed out to us that this may be due to the fact that the products sold in Poland are of lower quality than those available on the shelves in German stores.

It’s a stereotype that has been around for decades. After all, there are still plenty of shops in Polish cities that offer “articles from Germany”. Mainly chemistry, but also very often food products. So how is it with this “discrimination” of Poles? Stereotype or fact? We went to Germany to check it out. We took pictures of the German labels and then compared them with the Polish ones. Maybe the compositions in Poland are worse? Maybe there is less chocolate in Polish chocolate than in German? Or maybe a Pole consumes more e.g. palm oil than a German? We checked.

German cola like Poland, chocolate too

There are products that are available in almost every latitude. For example, the Coca-Cola drink. Labels in Poland and Germany look identical, what about the composition? A German drinks, for example, phosphoric acid or E150d dye in his cola. We look at the Polish label – the same.

Can German chocolate be more chocolatey than Polish? We took Milka into account because you can get it in both countries. Again – the compositions are identical. Chocolate sold in Poland should have “at least 33% cocoa solids”. On the German label is exactly the same.

What about the popular Heinz ketchup? Again, the label looks the same. The manufacturer ensures that 148 g of tomatoes were used per 100 g of the product. You can read it on both the Polish and German labels.

Sometimes, probably to simplify logistics, the same products, with the same labels in German, end up in both countries. Polish information is on the stickers. Such a strategy is used, for example, by the Rossmann drugstore chain. We tried to compare the composition of, for example, Hipp juices for children. It turned out to be pointless. It’s just that Polish and German bottles are identical.

We go further. It turns out that Snickers bars contain the same amount of nuts in Poland and Germany, and Barilla pasta has the same composition in both countries. The labels of the Monster energy drink also look identical.

Almost the same, but not the same

There are products in Poland that look almost identical to those you can get in Germany. Almost makes a difference here, although it does not necessarily mean that the Polish consumer is discriminated against. Rana’s tortellini pasta is an example here. At first glance, Polish and German packaging are identical. However, a Pole will get pasta with ham and cheese, and a German – only with ham. This does not mean that the manufacturer treats Poles worse – perhaps we have slightly different tastes and we like cheese more than Germans.

Pack sizes may also vary. This applies to, for example, carbonated drinks. German bottles are of a slightly different volume than Polish ones. Again, this is probably due to marketing reasons, not because Poland is treated worse.

The rest of the article is below the video

What about “risky” products?

A few years ago, producers began to be widely criticized for using unhealthy palm oil. There was also information that in Poland it is easier to find products with this ingredient.

See also: Disappointing figures. Inflation is not slowing down as expected

It should be noted that this oil is becoming less and less common. However, you can still find products containing it. Let’s take Pringles chips. The composition includes palm oil – but this applies to both Polish and German packaging. The same situation applies to other products with this ingredient: Lion Cereals flakes, Merci chocolates or Ritter Sport chocolates. However, Lay’s chips do not have rapeseed oil. Neither on one side of the Oder, nor on the other.

In a word, our experiment can be summed up in such a way that we failed to catch the producers messing with the compositions. Maybe the Polish consumer is still less wealthy than the German one, but it seems that he is treated no worse by food producers.

Author: Mateusz Madejski, journalist at Business Insider Poland