France's Fast Food Epidemic
A global culinary capital is quickly succumbing to the convenience of a burger mcdo.
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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The Fight for Fast Food Employment
The mayor of Marseille fights to keep a McDonald’s chain open to keep jobs in a poverty-stricken neighborhood.
The French government are not known for their support of American imported fast food. However, in one French city, both the mayor and residents are teaming up to fight the closure of one of the most famous American fast food chains in the world, McDonalds. The land of fine dining is no stranger to pushing back against the importing of junk food, but the residents of Marseille are now fighting a legal battle to keep a McDonalds franchise that has become a massive job provider from closing their doors.
Jean-Claude Gaudin, the mayor of Marseille, and the city’s senator, Samia Ghali, have joined the campaign even though they are at political odds. If McDonalds continues with a plan to close its branch in Saint-Barthélémy, a north Marseille neighborhood which is wrought by gang violence, drug trafficking and high unemployment, the senator has vowed to “oppose its presence throughout Marseille.”
With a staff of 77 people, the McDonald’s is the second largest employer in Saint-Barthélémy, which has an unemployment rate of 30%. This unemployment rate is more than three times the national average and has become revered in the community by employing school dropouts and youth desperate for work after serving prison terms. The franchise-holder, Jean-Pierre Brochiero, has stated that the restaurant has not been profitable, but that he obtained a court order last week suspending sales based on the grounds that he had failed to comply with a legal obligation to consult employees.
The radical French farmer, José Bové, made headlines by bulldozing a McDonalds in a protest against US taxes on Roquefort cheese nearly 20 years ago. This did not stop the rise of the the fast food giant which has become one of the most profitable restaurants of its kind in the French market.
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