Belgians urged to do their duty, eat more fries
BRUSSELS — In a country that claims to be the real birthplace of the finger food that Americans have the temerity to call french fries, rescuing the potato industry might easily be a matter of Belgian national pride.
So while a coronavirus lockdown keeps restaurants, bars and many of Belgium’s 5,000 frites stands closed, the trade association for the national potato industry is calling on the population at large to do its part by keeping deep fryers fired up on the homefront.
“Traditionally, Belgians eat fries once a week, and it’s always a festive moment,” Romain Cools, the secretary-general of industry group Belgapom, said Tuesday. “Now, we are asking them to eat frozen fries twice a week at home.”
The demand for frozen potatoes has nose-dived in recent weeks, and the Belgian industry faces a possible loss of $135.5 million if hundreds of tons of surplus potatoes don’t move this year, Cools said.
“The potato sector is so important,” he said. “It should be helped because it’s a flagship for our whole industry.”
The industry wants to find new ways to move surplus stock and avoid waste. In partnership with the Dutch-speaking Flemish region of Belgium, Belgapom set up a program to deliver 25 tons of potatoes a week to food banks. Businesses are working to export some of their supplies to Central Europe and Africa, where the demand remains high.
The industry is also looking at working with starch factories to find other uses for excess potato stocks, such as feeding livestock or producing green electricity.
Both France and Belgium claim to have invented fried string potatoes as a side dish. But the “pomme frites” culture is stronger in Belgium, where people share a taste for beer with the chip-eaters in Britain.