Chapter 11
Food exports have grown elevenfold since EU accession, every third apple and every fifth chicken in the Union come from Poland, and Polish cuisine is in the world's top fifteen according to TasteAtlas. The table has its dark sides too: overweight above the EU average, a food share of spending half as high again, organic farming at the tail end.
Polish cuisine and Polish food are two linked stories. The first is economic and spectacular: since 2004 agri-food exports have grown from EUR 5.2 bn to 58.4 bn, with a surplus of EUR 19.8 bn, and Poland is the EU leader in poultry, apples and mushrooms. The second is cultural and only gathering pace: 196 restaurants in the Michelin guide, 51 protected products in EU registers — from oscypek to the St Martin's croissant — and pierogi as the world's highest-rated Polish dish. The dark sides are shown alongside, by the same measure.
Fig. 11.1
Exports of agri-food products from Poland, EUR bn, 2004–2025
Fig. 11.2
Agri-food exports by product group, EUR bn, 2025
Meat — above all poultry (poultry-meat exports alone are about EUR 6.7 bn) — is the largest group, and tobacco ranks surprisingly high: Poland is one of the EU's largest cigarette producers. Confectionery, dairy and fruit make up the rest — the part of the economy that is both export and brand: Grójec apples, oscypek cheese and the St Martin's croissant carry EU name protection.
Fig. 11.3
TasteAtlas Awards 25/26 — best cuisines in the world, average user rating (1–5), top fifteen
Honestly about the method: TasteAtlas measures affection and recognition, not quality, and changes every edition. But 14th in the world, ahead of American, Korean and Thai cuisine, shows the brand's reach: pierogi, żurek and pączki are recognised far beyond Poland. Bigos — the national dish — does not make the top ten Polish dishes; Polish cuisine is rated highest by Poles, the Dutch, Germans and Swedes.
Fig. 11.4
Restaurants, protected products, production leaders, trade
The cultural side of the cuisine is only gathering pace — the Michelin guide covered Poland fully from 2023, and the number of stars grows with each edition — but the production side is already a powerhouse: the Union's leader in poultry and apples, the world leader in fresh mushrooms, the EU's carp capital. Żabka, Poland's largest retail chain, is one of the few Polish retail formats exported abroad.
Fig. 11.5
Beer consumption per inhabitant, litres a year, Poland, 2019–2025
For years a Polish statistical pride — today a calm note that not every trend rises. Poland was in the EU's top three for beer consumption; today it is off the podium and falling fastest of all the large markets: −18 litres per person in six years. It is a generational change, not a blip: younger consumers drink less alcohol (total consumption has fallen to 8.8 l of pure alcohol — the third year of decline), and the craft-beer boom of 2015–2019 has stalled.
Fig. 11.6
Four indicators, Poland vs the EU (or the EU target), % — different measures on one board
Cheap food has to be read together with the spending share: prices are low in absolute terms, but relative to income food in Poland takes a third more of the budget than the EU average. The darkest side of the Polish table is overweight — seven points above the EU average — and a rare case of regression is organic farming, whose share fell for almost a decade after 2013 and is only now rebounding.
The strongest single image of the whole topic: two decades of almost uninterrupted growth, one flat year (2009) and a jump in 2022 (inflation and the redirection of trade after Russia's attack on Ukraine). Food is one of the few sectors of the Polish economy with a lasting, large trade surplus.
Every fifth chicken in the Union (20.5% of production, 2.9 m tonnes — more than Spain and France together) and almost every third apple (29.4% of the EU harvest) come from Poland; Poland is also the world's largest exporter of fresh mushrooms (255,000 tonnes, USD 650 m in 2024).