A queue of 400 meters in front of the first store of the donut chain Krispy Kreme, more than 1,500 McDonalds in the territory (a record in Europe) and three hundred Popeyes “restaurants”, specializing in fried chicken, from here 2030. By dint of having the lead in their political quarrels, the French no longer look at what is happening on their plates and American brands are taking advantage of it, observes the British press. It’s simple, according to Daily Telegraph, recently “France has suffered culinary humiliation from the United States”.
The decline of a “nation of discerning foodies”
And all in a very worrying indifference which would be linked, according to the London newspaper, to “a particular disconnection in the national psyche when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Gallic culture”. Because we can revolt if an American massacres the life of Napoleon Bonaparte in the cinema, our National Academy rises at the slightest reading of an Anglicism, “but the most precious treasure of French culture, its cuisine, has given way with a indecent enthusiasm for the seduction of THE fast food“, wonders the British publication.
On the other side of the Channel, we laugh at these signs of decline in the country which proclaims itself “a nation of knowledgeable gourmets”, as recalled by Times. “When Asterix and Obelix, the diehard Gauls, were supposed to visit Great Britain in 50 BCE, they discovered with disgust our country’s penchant for lukewarm cervoise and boiled wild boar, writes the British daily. Then , fifty years ago, when the first American fast-food restaurants arrived in Paris, skeptics predicted a rapid and desperate return home… These dark predictions were contradicted, the intruders prospered.
This culinary defeat has very real consequences on the scale: from 1997 to 2020, obesity has doubled among French adults, with even worse figures among children. Like an aftertaste of culinary Waterloo.