For the first featured interview in Stela’s Food Stories, I had the wonderful opportunity and honour to ask my colleague, Marijan Katalenić, an experienced food quality and safety expert, several interesting questions about his career, issues related to food production, control, safety and nutritional value. His answers shed some light on a few recurring and often misunderstood topics that shape the way we look at food and nutrition.

Q: Can you tell us a little more about your work so far?

A: It is difficult to summarise my career in a few sentences. I started working in a laboratory for food additives, substances without which the food industry, including small producers (called OPG in Croatia), could not produce food for sale.

In order to be able to know where additives may be used according to the legislation, I had to get to know the categories of food, raw materials, production technology, as well as the laws related to it.

It is this knowledge, along with the results of laboratory analysis and accurate data on the safety management and composition of food, that gives a complete picture of what we eat. It shows the differences in declared and actual (found) composition of food items and reveals consumer misconceptions about the food they buy and the truth about food producers.

Q: What was your role in the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ)?

A: At the end of my working life, I was the head of the Department for Health and Food Quality Control, which means that I managed the system of accredited laboratories, and also participated in the creation or amendment of legislation in the field of food. One of the hardest parts for said laboratories was to meet the requirements of the state while staying commercially competitive.

It was also challenging to harmonise the former Croatian legislation with the EU legislation, to understand the regulations in which you were not involved when they were made and to successfully implement them, without food producers being affected by incomprehensible and rigid decisions.

“From the moment any food is picked and processed for storage, the process of breaking down nutrients begins“

Q: What are the areas of competence of HZJZ?

A: The activities of HZJZ are broad and range from medical laboratory tests, collection and evaluation of health data, development of strategies and guidelines in the field of preventive health, nutrition of the population as well as analysis of food, water and items of general use… etc.

Q: With Croatia’s entry into the EU in 2013, the laws had to be adapted to the provisions of the European bodies. What do you think are the positive and what are the negative consequences of the mentioned process?

A: Adaptation to EU legislation in Croatia began after the start of negotiations in 2006, but the adoption of EU legislation does not mean its immediate implementation in food production systems. It is a process that continues to a lesser extent today.

It is extremely difficult to change human habits, to learn the application of traceability and consistent control of the production process, as well as occasional negligence as a result of individual irresponsibility. This is sometimes due to unclearly written EU regulations, which in the long run ends up playing against the producers.

Thus, some food producers from large EU countries consciously avoid stating, for example, the country of origin (where the food is finally packaged), and thus also the country of origin of the main ingredient (from which country the dominant food ingredient comes). This is the information that 78% of consumers are looking for.

Once published, EU regulations are difficult to change due to the complex confirmation procedure. The consequence is that ambiguous parts of certain regulations remain so or are interpreted by the heads of working groups in certain areas. The downside of this is that these people in charge of the interpretations did not participate in the drafting, agreements and explanations for the originally written regulations, and they often solve the problem with oversimplified clarifications.

This is only one part of the problem, while the other is non-compliance with the clear regulations of the European Commission, the consequences of which are recorded in the RASFF notification system for food withdrawn from the market. RASFF stands for “Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed”.

Q: How are products controlled when importing food to the Croatian market? What do you think could be improved?

A: Food control, according to a specific algorithm, is performed only for food that comes from countries that are not EU members; in the case of food produced in the EU, it is done through established monitoring in the form of targeted analysis of certain types of food and harmful substances. This is also the principle of EU functioning: free flow of goods, under the same conditions, in all EU countries.

All third countries that export food to the EU must comply with EU food safety regulations.
Of course, this is not always the case, as shown by, for example, the affair with ethylene oxide (a pesticide used for disinfecting powdered products) which is the result of different regulations in the EU and third countries. While ethylene oxide has been banned in the EU for several years, third countries, especially from humid and hot parts of the world, cannot achieve satisfactory conditions for the production of healthy food in the segment of powdered raw materials, so they remove live contaminants with this pesticide.

The only ways to prevent harmful substances from entering food are: harmonising legislation, harmonising production procedures and modernising technology.

“Cooking at high temperatures, overcooking or thickening destroy the nutrients in the final product.”

Q: What is your opinion on the Nutriscore food labelling system? Under such a system, many products with protected designations of origin (PDO) and designations of geographical origin move into the red category. What is your view on the potential implementation of such a system?

A: Nutriscore is another system that tries to warn and/ or direct the consumer to the nutritional value of the food he buys, and thereby influence his diet. Around 20 or 30 years ago, some EU countries advocated systems that were meant to make consumers aware of proper nutrition. Thus there was a system of “Keyboard”, then “Divided plate”, then “Traffic light” (similar to Nutriscore), and in Croatia, the sign “Live healthy”.

All these systems are based on the idea that, through graphic representations, certain signs direct the consumer towards food that has better nutritional properties but also warn them about bad ones. However, most of the traditional high-value products from different categories simply do not fit into the recommended nutritional standards, so one or more ingredients will have a red label, and thus a warning for the consumer.

Nutriscore is still being developed for acceptance in all EU countries, but already today some of them have their own national labels, which creates some confusion and misunderstanding in the EU as a free market.
In addition, any change to the rules in labelling food creates large financial expenses for the manufacturer, while the final result is questionable.

Q: Throughout your career, you analysed the nutritional value of food and the effect that cooking has on nutrient losses. What are your findings and which cooking method has proven to be the best?

A: First of all, it should be said that from the moment any food is picked and processed for storage, the process of breaking down nutrients begins.

The choice of the moment of harvesting, picking or similar must be that when the fruit is in a state of ripening, and the food ingredients are in the optimal amount. Picking before full ripening does not allow the fruit to reach a sufficient amount of nutrients while picking after the optimal moment leads to fruit degradation, which reduces the amount of nutrients and increases the number of harmful decomposition products.

The best way to preserve food ingredients, especially fruits and vegetables, is by quick-freezing them, after being cleaned. When preparing meals with fresh fruits and vegetables, this is achieved in the shortest possible time from picking.

Any preparation of a ready-made meal, which includes chopping, kneading, squeezing and heat treatment, reduces the nutritional substances in the meal or makes them unusable (e.g. proteins).

A series of tests done on ready-made meals indicate that cooking at high temperatures, overcooking or thickening, destroy the nutrients in the final product. To what extent this is expressed depends on the condition of the raw materials, the mechanical processing involved, as well as temperature and cooking time.

Nutrient substances are decomposed, become indigestible or are released from the ingredients, so they only partially enter our body.
That means that the way our grandmother cooked simply has no justification from the nutritional point of view, since the long cooking involved, meant a significant loss of beneficial nutrients.

We can reduce losses during heat treatment only by cooking with steam, under pressure or by short exposure to high temperatures.

Q: Working in restaurants in England and Croatia, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of waste that they create. What is the situation in the food industry and do you think that enough efforts are being made to solve this problem?

A: Food waste should be divided into:
1) Necessary waste, generated when raw materials are peeled, cleaned, cut and removed.
2) Inedible parts and waste from ready-made and already prepared meals.

The first one goes to the composting plant where it is divided and processed. In the case of other waste, already prepared dishes or even fruits and vegetables that are eaten without preparation, an alternative strategy should be applied according to the different types of waste.

This is what the data on household waste in Croatia looks like:

• • 46% consists of fruits and vegetables,
  • inedible parts of food, such as eggshells, tea and coffee leaves 12%,
  • bread and pastries 9%, potatoes 8% and meat 7%,
  • pasta and rice and milk and milk products are the least wasted, 4% each,
  • fish and prepared meals 3%,
  • cakes, biscuits and processed fruits and vegetables 2%

Food waste in EU restaurants accounts for 13% of the total amount of food waste, of which 30% corresponds to leftovers on the plate, 20% to prepared unserved dishes, and 15% to fruits and vegetables.

Today, there are several strategies to reduce food waste here and in other EU countries.
The first strategy is to draw attention to the problem and connect it with the consequences for energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution.
This is followed by an education strategy, which unfortunately is neither persistent nor supported by the media, but spontaneous and occasional. Today, the price of food will encourage consumers, industry and restaurants to get serious and do better planning.

Q: Surely among our readers, we have those who are concerned about the safety of certain additives that are very widespread in food products today. What is your opinion about additives and which ones do you avoid consuming?

A: Food additives are a technological necessity in food production. They are used, more or less, only at the moment when all technological and economic resources in the production process have been exhausted.

But it must be mentioned that today it has been noticed that food additives are also used to falsify food, changing its texture, adjusting its colour or reducing the proportion of the original raw material. This directly affects the reduction of nutritional value to the detriment of consumers, while increasing the producer’s earnings.

It is difficult to find food that does not contain them. This is precisely why they create controversy among both scientists and consumers. However, EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), the panel for food additives, does a constant evaluation of permitted additives in terms of new knowledge and analytical methods for detecting possible health effects.

Based on that, from 1.7. in 2022, titanium dioxide E171 was banned and may no longer be used as a colouring pigment in food products.

Concerns about the use of additives resulted in a movement against them. Reports or populist booklets about the harmfulness of additives appear every now and then, and they only serve to scare consumers, diverting attention from much more important problems related to nutrition and food adulteration.

Tests on the intake of additives that were carried out here and in France (independent of each other) showed that there is no danger of excessive intake of additives, but it is necessary to pay attention to certain groups (nitrites) that are more often consumed through meat products than others.

For more than 50 years, HZJZ has had a specialised team dealing with the health safety of additives and the legislation related to them. The connection between the health soundness of additives, food production, the amount found in food, and health, nevertheless gives us the right to say that the perception of the harmfulness of additives and their reality is completely opposite, provided that they are used correctly.

Q: What do you think about organic production and the way it is regulated in Croatia?

A: Organic production in Croatia is legally harmonised with the Regulations of the European Commission, so there are no differences in that segment. It is the joint legislation that opens up the possibility of placing organically produced food on the market from registered facilities in other EU countries.

There are different views on organic products and their importance for human health.

Analytical tests of the nutritional value, especially of high-value food ingredients, vitamins and minerals in ecological products and products of integrated agriculture, do not show statistically significant differences in the amounts found. The reality is that, in the majority of the cases, certain permitted pesticides are also being used in organically grown foods. Additionally, the same commercial varieties are represented in both production methods.
The end result is a very similar product regardless of the method involved.

As for harmful substances, traces of pesticides can be found in 20% of fruits and vegetables from integrated production, but only 1% exceeds the permitted daily intake.
It must be said, although, that health effects on the body can be expected by repeatedly consuming food that contains said harmful substances in quantities greater than the permitted daily intake.

Today, micro and nano plastics are ubiquitous and do not depend on the production method, so it is another risk that no production method can avoid.

However, organically produced food carries the psychological advantage of a placebo for the consumer over conventionally produced one, because believing that he is buying an organic product, the consumer stimulates the hormones of pleasure and happiness, thereby achieving a better health status of the organism.

In general, the choice of food and diet, as well as lifestyle, must be adapted to the individual’s belief that it is the best for him and his organism, without forgetting the basic principles of proper nutrition.

I would like to thank Marijan for his patience, detailed answers and his willingness to share all the priceless knowledge that he has gathered during his successful carrier. I can say that I have learned a lot through our conversations and I’m delighted he will be collaborating on many more topics to come on Stela’s Food Stories.