Fights over chocolate spread reveal France’s dirty secret
In the French city of Lyon, hundreds of the world’s finest chefs gathered yesterday for the funeral of Paul Bocuse, the man credited with the creation of nouvelle cuisine, who died last week. The scion of a family that had been producing professional chefs since the 17th century, Bocuse was the very embodiment of a certain type of Frenchness: a cultured, cultivated perfectionist who elevated the production of food to an art form.
At the same time as his funeral was taking place, in branches of the Intermarche supermarket across France, shoppers were fighting to get hold of onekilogram jars of Nutella, on special offer at just €1.41 (NZ$2.40), down from about €4.50 (NZ$7.60). In Brittany, one branch sold 400 jars in 21 minutes.
It’s tempting to wonder whether Bocuse’s pallbearers were able to detect a rapid rotatory motion from within the load on their shoulders – tempting, too, to think that perhaps France should bury its much burnished self-image along with the master chef. For this, the home of haute cuisine and haughty chefs, the country of foie gras, baguettes and Charles de Gaulle’s celebrated ‘‘246 varieties of cheese’’, has a dirty secret: it has fallen in love with cheap fast food.
McDonald’s, that bellwether of all things unpalatable yet delicious, opened its first branch in France in 1972. but it fared so badly that the company withdrew from the country until 1979. Since then, France has grown to become the company’s most profitable market outside the United States, with more than 1400 branches at the end of 2016.
On a wider note, the number of fast food establishments across France grew from 52,210 to 64,130 between 2011 and 2015.
McDonald’s succeeded by going native , which extended far beyond renaming the Quarter Pounder ‘‘Le Royal Cheese’’. It correctly identified the French predilection for eating a` table or en famille, and made sure that the ambience of its outlets was as much geared to comfort as to speed.
Burger King, by contrast, came in brandishing the Stars and Stripes aloft and left with its tail between its legs in 1997, though it returned subdued in 2012 with a far more – and successful – strategy.
None of this has gone unnoticed or unbemoaned, especially when fast food overtook traditional French restaurants by value in 2012, leaving traditionalists angrily waving their ham-and-butter baguettes at the newcomers.
Nutella, by contrast, has had an easy ride in France.
Developed in post-World War II Italy at a time of cocoa rationing and a hazelnut glut, the Ferrero company’s spread was an instant hit when it was introduced to France in the 1960s.
Half of all French families have it on their breakfast table, and for adults it has come to represent a nostalgic taste of childhood. Such is the affection it is held in that one French couple were prevented from naming their daughter Nutella only by legal decree.
The French are the world’s biggest consumers and producers of the popular chocolate spread, which enjoys an 82 per cent market share, despite being largely composed of sugar and palm oil.
If there is a chink in Nutella’s chocolatey armour, it is this last ingredient, whose production has been linked to deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats, prompting the French government to propose (and largely back down from) a special tax on products derived from palm oil.
In the meantime, in a country still reeling from a butter shortage and rocketing prices, it is tempting to echo the words of Marie Antoinette: ‘‘Let them eat Nutella.’’