France's Fast Food Epidemic
French food is known to be so amazing that UNESCO has declared it an important part of the world’s cultural heritage. While France’s eating habits have been known around the world for portion control, the use of basic foods and very few processed or fast foods, late last month a new report suggest that 30 million people could be obese in the country by 2030 due to fast food giants such as McDonalds that have begun to be a popular choice in many areas of both urban and suburban France.
Twenty years ago, José Bové, a sheep farmer, famously dismantled a half-built McDonald’s at Millau in southern France starting a national crusade against “la malbouffe” or junk food. However, it has been proven that France loves burgers as a survey published earlier this year by Gira Conseil has shown that the country’s 66 million people consumed 1.46 billion of them in 2017 and that the famous American export is featured on the menus of 85% of French restaurants. Bernard Boutboul, Gira Conseil’s managing director, describes the burger’s seemingly unstoppable rise in France as “a euphoria, a craze” that has now started to verge on “hysteria.”
France’s 32,000 fast-food outlets now represent 60% of the entire French restaurant business as healthy food is very rarely cheap in France. The country’s food processing and distribution firms are big and powerful and French eating habits are no longer a model of good eating.
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