1000 tons of good food

2 days to go: feast ends 40-day fasting period

1000 tons of smoked meat, 230 tons of sheep and lamb meat and millions of eggs are eaten at Easter in Austria. Before that, there is traditionally spinach on Maundy Thursday!(Bild: HETIZIA_ChLesjak, stock.adobe.com)

A feast ends Lent: millions of dyed eggs, tons of lamb, Easter ham and smoked meat end up on our plates. The healthy spinach on Maundy Thursday was of little consequence.

Around 50 million dyed eggs are sold in shops around Easter. Just as many white and brown fresh eggs are sold in the two months before the highest Christian festival. After that, however, Austrians have had enough: sales fall by ten percent in the following two weeks.

Man does not live by eggs alone
Almost 230 tons of sheep and lamb meat are eaten in Austrian households around Easter. In the month before and after, the figure is only around a third. The peak is not quite so clear for cooked ham, which is apparently particularly popular at Christmas and reaches its sales peak in December. This is not the case for smoked meat, which is consumed twice as often at Easter (almost 1000 tons) as in "normal" months.

Maundy Thursday is "Spinach Day"
But before the calorie battle, Maundy Thursday is a day of fasting: with spinach! Although Mr and Mrs Austria, with an annual per capita consumption of around half a kilogram, are not exactly among the most passionate "Popeyes", four times the "normal" amount is consumed on this day.

Converted to the annual sales volume, this amounts to seven percent of the more than six million frozen spinach packs sold each year during Holy Week.

Aversion to cabbage and spinach can be genetic
If you can't or don't want to make friends with the vegetable, science has an excuse: an aversion to cabbage and spinach can be genetic. It mainly affects people who perceive specific bitter substances particularly well thanks to a genetic variant. This is what scientists at the German Institute of Human Nutrition have discovered.