Findus 'horsemeat lasagne': to blame the food industry is to neglect the real scandal

So, let's see if we've got this straight. Horsemeat masquerading as beef has been sold in England and France by major retailers and supermarket chains. The products involved - frozen, refrigerated, vacuum-packed, tinned and other versions of dishes such as lasagne and ravioli - were produced and sold to retailers by French food assembly companies such as Findus, who bought their 'beef' from meat distributors such as French company Comigel, who, in turn, had bought their 'beef' from major French importers such as Spanghero, who, in their turn, had bought their 'beef' from slaughterhouses in Romania.
But now that the fraud has been discovered, and reputations are at stake, everyone in the chain is stabbing everyone else in the back in the hope of avoiding blame. The supermarkets are suing Findus, who say they are taking legal action against Comigel for product misrepresentation, Comigel is doing the same against Spanghero, who, of course, are blaming the Romanians for ripping them off.

Even more worryingly, the British imports came from Dutch and other suppliers which is why authorities now fear that that this kind of fraud exists not just in France, but in many other European countries too.

We needn't linger on the immediate and superficial question of why this fraud was perpetrated, or even where in the system it happened, because the direct reasons for it are very simple: horsemeat is three times cheaper than beef and hard to distinguish from it in dishes such as those incriminated, that which makes it a tempting option in the food industry's efforts to cut production costs to keep prices down, and sanitary, advertising and other controls within the industry are notoriously lax.

Heads shall undoubtedly roll as a result of this of course, be they those of executives from the supermarkets, food assembly companies, distributors, importers, abbatoir facilities, some mafia or other, or any combination of them. But although they are technically 'to blame' for this, they are just convenient fall guys really, because the real blame lies elsewhere.

The food industry is a cut-throat business in which retailers have been ruthlessly forcing down their suppliers' margins for years, particularly since the crisis began. But they are not doing this for the sadistic pleasure of seeing suppliers suffer, they are doing it because the public demands it of them.

Food bills are among the most onerous of all household bills, particularly for families, single parents, the unemployed, those on low wages and others who make up the many millions of the lower-income bracket. But unlike income, local and property taxes and others, all of which rise continually but can't be avoided, cash-strapped households do have an influence on food prices. Millions of people have been buying cheaper and cheaper food in order to help them to make ends meet, and the industry has been obliged to meet that demand. The fact is that cheap food has become a necessity for many people whose income has stagnated or worse.

And what are governments doing about it? Well, not much of course because they know that if there is one thing the voting public hates it's rising food prices, so they have no vested interest in pushing up food prices by introducing draconian and costly legislation to improve the quality of what is sold in supermarkets if they can avoid it. Besides, who would pay for the tens of thousands of inspectors who would be needed to enforce it? And, as Junior Minister for the Social Economy said today, "we can't put an inspector behind every side of beef."

So there we have it. We live in a Western world where people buy food which is so cheap that it cannot possibly be adequately nutritional or of good quality. Butter has given way to margarines, 'spreads' and worse, sausages may legally contain pigs' tongue, muzzle, anus and skin, fruit and vegetables are bland and antiseptic clones of what they used to be, dairy products are a joke, and it's becoming hard to find a real baguette or pastry, even in France. Prices - and quality - are being driven mechanically down by an economic logic which is way out of kilter.

The 'Findus horsemeat lasagne' story offers us not just a much-needed insight into the food industry's practices, it also comes as a stark reminder that our so-called 'advanced' society remains incapable of feeding its poorer members decently, even in 2013.

That's the real scandal....

It's time we made an effort to save Traditional French restaurants from a gloomy and uncertain future

A dish at one of my favourite traditional restaurants in Lyon

No lover of traditional French cuisine will be happy with the results of a recent study which confirms the continuing downturn in the fortunes of the traditional French restaurant business and predicts that the bad news is set to continue.

The study, carried out by Xerfi, an economic studies institute specialising in market sector analysis, comes in the wake of poor performances by the restaurant business over the last few years which continued in 2012 with a drop in volume of 2% due to its vulnerability faced with consumers who are looking for ever more ways of reducing their non-essential spending.

Le Figaro has published some of the study's general conclusions, which point to a further retraction of 1% in 2013 for restaurants in general, but there's even worse news for traditional French restaurants (as opposed to Chinese, Italian and other kinds of restaurant), who are predicted to see another drop of 2% this year, resulting in a substantial total loss of 7% over 2012-2013. Figures are, however, set to pick up by less than 1% in 2014.

Those figures may not look too bad if taken in isolation, but they should be put into the wider context of the performance of food outlets in general. They include fast food restaurants, boulangeries (which have greatly increased their turnover in sandwiches and other lunchtime snacks over the last few years), and small, local supermarkets with their ranges of food designed to be eaten outside or at work.

Fast food outlets, after years of rapid growth, have seen their sales stabilise, but not drop, over the last two years, and they are predicted to bounce back more quickly over the next two years. In other words, they are continuing and will continue to eat into the market share of restaurants, and that of traditional French restaurants in particular. More competition will come in the form of an increase in the diversity of fast food fueled by boulangeries, sandwich shops and large restaurant chains.

Faced with this prospect, the restaurant business seems to be gearing up to fight back with what could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. In order to cut costs the business is beginning to interest itself in large food processing companies which, having recognised the beckoning opportunity, are working hard to increase the variety and quality of what is called 'cuisine d'assemblage' - literally, 'assembly cooking'. This relatively new range of products differs from those used by more traditional restaurants because of the use of semi or fully-prepared (although rarely frozen) products which are then 'put together' by kitchen staff. This kind of product is already being used by restaurant chains.

But cuisine d'assemblage presents a three-fold risk to the restaurant business, and traditional restaurants in particular. With much less food preparation involved there are likely to be redundancies among kitchen staff and even chefs. Also, and as all kitchen staff have to do is follow the instructions, creativity and variety are likely to take a back seat to standardised recipes. This is not good news for those who appreciate traditional restaurants which serve fresh and traditional produce and ingredients in an authentic manner, as those restaurants may well find it even harder to compete due to the relatively high cost of their meals.

Lastly, consumer belt-tightening and fierce competition from the increase in sales of fast food, restaurant chains and cuisine d'assemblage, all of which represent cheaper alternatives to traditional restaurants, resulted in the closure of around 6% of traditional restaurants between September 2011 and September 2012, and that figure is predicted to rise to even higher, record, levels in 2013.

I was saddened to read this news. As someone who eats regularly in traditional restaurants I have seen some of them close over the last few years (mainly, but not only, in urban areas), and others have chosen or been forced to cut corners and introduce some aspects of cuisine d'assemblage in order to survive.

Traditional French cuisine and restaurants still enjoy a well-deserved worldwide reputation for excellence despite the existential threat of cut-throat competition which thrives not on quality but on low prices.

The only way of reversing, or at least stabilising, this trend, is to make a conscious effort to eat in traditional restaurants despite their slightly higher prices and even if it means sacrificing one meal out a month in a Chinese or pizza joint.

I for one am not going to desert my favourite restaurants anytime soon and I hope that today's sobering news persuades others to do likewise, because if the restaurant-going public doesn't make an extra effort to support traditional restaurants, nobody else will.....

France debates the 'Nutella tax'

Brown stuff in a jar

The renowned qualities of French cuisine go a long way towards explaining why the French are 'patriotic' eaters who sometimes find it difficult to adapt to foreign food. There are two major exceptions to this general rule however, the first being the massively popular McDonalds, which I wrote about here, and Nutella, which is an equally popular chocolate hazelnut spread.

So it's not surprising that there have been dozens of articles in the French press recently about government plans to impose a massive 300% hike on palm oil, which is one of Nutella's main ingredients.

Nutella is an Italian product which was first marketed in 1963 by Italian company Ferrero, but it has been produced in a subsidiary here in France for years in order to keep up with French demand. And demand there is. It has become such an intrinsic part of growing up that I imagine that many French people would say it was actually French.

I don't know what percentage of children don't like chocolate but it is surely very low, and that is why almost every French child slathers it onto bread or toast for breakfast before heading off to school. They eat it during their afternoon snack as well. But the appeal doesn't stop there because many of those children continue to eat it long after they have grown up. It can be found piled onto pancakes (often accompanied by sliced banana) poured into cake recipe bowls, and it is present in many desserts. Few French homes do not have a jar of it in the cupboard, and my god daughter would go ballistic if ever I forgot to make sure I had some in stock for when she comes to stay.

The problem though, is that about 20% of Nutella consists of palm oil, a product which is known to have a very high saturated fat level and which is suspected of contributing to obesity and even heart disease. Also, the widespread use of palm oil in food has led to deforestation in Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere in order to create new plantations of the oil palms from which it is derived. All of this has been used by the cash-strapped government as a stick to beat it with and try to introduce a 300% tax on it. The proposal has been approved by the Senate and will now be debated in Parliament.

There has been much public debate about the proposal too, and it was even defended by a nutrition expert in one article. Her argument was 'why pick on Nutella? After all, palm oil is used in many foodstuffs and even in schools.' She says that we cannot do without it but there's no problem if we don't eat too much of it. Well that's not easy given that it is used in many bakery products, biscuits, crisps, many kinds of processed food and low-priced restaurants.

This reminds me of a....oh, never mind...

That this tax should lead to so much press coverage and debate is understandable of course, given Nutella's enormous popularity, but despite all the hue and cry the bottom line is that the tax would only lead to an almost negligeable price rise of about €0.06 per kilo.

Still, all the debate and articles will have had one positive side to them, and that is that they have served as a reminder to the public that a balanced and healthy diet is important.

So, should we be allowing our children to eat Nutella? Whatever the answer it pays to do some research, and one enterprising young Frenchman has done just that in a startling manner. Here's a video of his simple experiment, which was cheekily put to the same music that Nutella uses in its ads. Be warned, the result of his experiment is NOT a pretty sight. I don't happen to like Nutella myself and this video is certainly not likely to make me change from my usual Weetabix, banana and milk anytime soon.

Bon appetit (?)

Eating à-la-française is not just about food

One of my preferred eateries here in Lyon

Elegantly-laid tables, fine wines, beautifully prepared dishes. These are just a few of the many images that are conjured up when discussing what eating in France is like, but the reality is somewhat different. Contrary to widely-held views, eating here is not first and foremost about enjoying the food. It’s about enjoying the people who sit down to eat it.

I’m writing this entry in response to a commenter on The Guardian who suggested that I write about French cheeses, of which he is a fan. Having thought about it for a while though, all my ideas for this subject seemed to revolve around the usual kind of gushing praise that British and other newspapers heap upon French food in their ‘Food & Drink’ sections. 

Articles on cheese in these papers often talk about bringing a fine selection of cheeses out of the fridge on time and laying them lovingly onto elegant cheese platters and selecting four of five excellent bottles, one for each cheese, and at least two different breads, before going on to relate the exquisite sensations to be enjoyed whilst eating and drinking each cheese and wine etcetera. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do that, so I hope the commenter concerned will understand why and forgive me.

The majority of French people do know how to select and serve cheese of course, and they also know how to eat correctly in good restaurants and prepare finely-tuned cuisine, but it isn’t what many of them prefer to do, which is to burn the good etiquette book and chuck it out the window.

A first social invitation to eat often involves a more-or-less formal table. Your host may even serve your wine, your food is served for you, and in no circumstances do you help in any way. You’re the guest after all. But if all goes well and everyone enjoys each other’s company, subtle changes to the conduct of subsequent meals together will occur.

You may begin to hear things like “how about if I bring the serving bowls in and we all help ourselves?” and your host may well hold his empty glass out and ask you to fill it because the bottle is nearer to you and he can’t reach it. Politics and/or religion may begin to creep into the conversation.

If this happens to you it’s a good bet that your company is appreciated and that your hosts would like to lighten up on the rules and become more relaxed and familiar with you. You should seize opportunities like this and help further them.

You will soon find yourself mopping up sauces with your bread and helping to clear the plates in preparation for the next dish. Bread connoisseurs who know each other smell bread from extremely close up to appreciate the aroma, and so shall you. 

Elbows will eventually be put on tables, and you won’t get a cheese plate anymore because, like everyone else, you’ll just clean a corner of your main dish plate with bread in which to place your cheese, cheese which you have cut with your own knife after wiping it on your bread. And if people are eating different desserts, they may well ask if they can “just have a little taste of yours” before dipping into it with their own spoon.

Now you’re getting somewhere. Conversation will become more incisive, ribald jokes will be told, and it’s now that you begin to realise what eating in France is all about, which is developing relationships and not showing off your impeccable table manners. What constitutes good table manners here can, and often does, vary according to who one is eating with. The food is important, sure, but the whole exercise is ultimately geared to enjoying the company of people whom one appreciates in a relaxed and unfettered manner.

In fact, some of the very best and most satisfying meals I’ve ever eaten in France happen when longstanding friends gather together and a couple of them, or I myself, have just been to the local market. So it’s roll-your-sleeves-up time and all the charcuterie and excellent cheeses are just plonked down in the centre of the kitchen table, still in their wrappers. Napkins are kitchen paper roll. Add a couple of good breads and a few bottles of local wine – fine wines would be out of place and inappropriate here - and it’s every man woman and child for him or herself. Banter and fun guaranteed. Heaven.

That’s what real eating à-la-française means to me. Eating for many French people is first and foremost a vehicle – an excuse even – for relaxed, informal and enjoyable social interaction. This is why the sooner the etiquette book gets burned the sooner everyone can start enjoying eating and each other. And that is precisely what art de vivre is all about in its day-to-day sense.

Buying a good baguette in France: A piece of cake?

Toasted, with butter and marmelade. Yum!

 You can enter any boulangerie in France and buy a real French baguette with its succulent and aroma-filled inside and its golden crust, which ‘gives’ and crunches just perfectly when you bite into it.

Well, that’s what tourist agency brochures and travel articles would have you believe, but things aren’t that simple unfortunately. The reality is that the type, price and quality of bread you buy can and do vary substantially. Finding a good, authentic, baguette – or other types of bread – is not as easy as it is widely believed to be, and most people here have their favourite boulangeries as well as their ‘to be avoided at all costs’ addresses.

So what is a ‘boulangerie’ in France? In which of them should you buy your bread, and why? 

Boulangeries have changed enormously over the years, and it’s important to know why and how. Up until about 35 years ago the price of bread was fixed by governmental decree. This simple mechanism wasn’t difficult to enforce as there were only a few types of bread at that time. Also, the decree system went a long way towards explaining why bread was more or less the same everywhere – although there have always been good and bad bakers - because the strict pricing policy dictated that the recipe be a relatively basic and simple one.

But the law introduced in 1987 which allows bakers to fix the price of their own bread radically changed the market because it was at least partly responsible for the much more varied kinds and qualities of bread we see today. This is because deregulated pricing has allowed bakers to produce the kinds of bread they want to, using the types of flour and other ingredients they want to, within the limits of legislation controlling the quality of bread in France. Adapting to different client groups is also easier today – for example you will generally find a wider choice of breads in large cities than in villages, where bread is often more traditional in presentation. Some bakers in more affluent areas sell higher-quality products at higher prices, and others in other areas may have a different client base.

This law represents one of the two major changes in the French baking industry which have taken place over the last 40 years, and although the offer is more varied, so is the quality. And that’s where a little knowledge goes a long way.

The other major change centres upon the question of just what a boulangerie actually is these days, and just what a ‘real baguette’ is too. There are three principal types of bread shop today, and the differences between them are substantial as they reflect the major evolutions in bread making techniques which have occurred over the years.

Many people - including quite a few French people incidentally - walk into a baker’s shop to buy bread thinking that they are in a boulangerie. But there is a good chance that they are not, and what kind of baguette they buy depends on which type of shop they walk into.

The first – and luckily for us the biggest – category is that of, well, the old-style ‘boulangerie.’ There are around 32,000 boulangeries in France today. Boulangeries are the guarantee of a product made wholly on the premises, and they are thus the most authentic. They are instantly recognisable because they actually have a sign or logo outside saying ‘boulangerie.’ This is because they are the only bakers who respect the high standards that must be respected to produce authentic bread.  A boulanger must be a professional artisan who chooses his own raw materials, makes his own dough, controls its fermentation, and shapes and bakes it on the premises. No frozen products or freezing techniques may be used.

If a boulanger also makes patisserie (cakes, tarts etc) and/or viennoiserie (croissants, pains au chocolat etc), those products have to be produced using the same criteria.

In other words, you know you’re getting an authentic product. That said, whether or not it pleases your own particular tastes is another matter, and I’ll be writing about what good bread is and how to recognise it in a subsequent article. Also, some boulangers are better, more conscientious and more experienced than others, and that also increases variety and quality. 

But – and there’s always a but – not all boulangeries are fully independent artisans. The last 30 years has seen the emergence of another category of bakers – those who are under contract to produce bread for a ‘marque meunière’, or ‘flour producer brand.’ These shops all sell more-or-less exactly the same products, because the bakers are under contract to exclusively use a particular flour producers’ flours and other ingredients to make breads of the flour producer’s choosing. They must also scrupulously respect the preparation and baking recipes they are instructed to use, down to the smallest detail.

And you don’t have to be a ‘real’ baker to start up one of these shops. Anyone can do it. A few months’ training in their training school and you’re up and running. This kind of baker is to all intents and purposes operating a kind of franchise, and more and more of them open each year.

Because they produce on the premises from start to finish however, they too can call their shops ‘boulangerie’, and the flour producer provides its own distinctive corporate and trademarked colour schemes and logos etc to market the shop and the brand. That means they are instantly recognisable to those who know their bakers’ shops. Banette, Polichette and Baguetti are some of the better-known brands. Traditional bakers aren’t happy with this state of affairs though, because they claim that the profession is heading down the road to corporate uniformity in both product and methods.

The bread itself? It’s often reasonable, given that it wasn’t even made by experienced bakers in many cases, but it is, well, standardised in both taste and aspect and it often lacks character. I’ll buy one if there’s nothing else around. And I’ll certainly buy one before ever being tempted to walk into the third – and most hotly contested - category of bakers’ shops, the ‘point chaud’.

Because many people see bread and pastries in a shop that looks like a boulangerie, they automatically assume that it actually is one, but the point chaud is anything but. 

A point chaud is basically a place with lots of cold rooms and freezers which you rarely see because they are at the back of the shop, and these storage facilities are filled with frozen baguettes, croissants and many other products. The products were mass-produced in a factory anywhere up to 200km away and are delivered frozen, to be baked in the shop. (Incidentally, these frozen-product factories also produce the millions of baguettes etc sold in supermarkets.) What you do see however are the baking ovens and bread racks full of bread, just like in a real baker’s shop. But there isn’t even a qualified baker on the premises and the bread is ‘baked’ in batches by serving staff as and when it is needed, from whence the ‘freshly baked’ impression the more unsuspecting clients get.

As you may imagine, these shops are not appreciated by traditional boulangeries and bakers, who do not consider what they sell to be ‘real’ bread. Worse, they are springing up all over the country and there are already over 6000 of them. Their products are often of very average quality and taste and I personally would never buy them. Many people do buy them however because they don’t – unbelievably you might say – check for the most obvious sign that they are entering a point chaud, which is that they cannot use the word ‘boulangerie’ on the shop front or anywhere else, and they must use the denomination ‘point chaud.’ You have been warned.

The result of all these changes is that unless you know how to recognise which kind of baker’s shop you are walking into, you only have something like a 50/50 chance of buying a traditional baguette made by a trained artisan. The rest are either frozen products which have been heated up and browned or trademark branded bread. Not all of the latter two are bad of course, but it can’t be denied that they do not share the same characteristics and taste as bread made by a real baker who uses his experience and originality to produce the kind of baguette that connoisseurs prefer. 

At the end of the day though, bread, like wine, cheese, and food in general, has to be ‘learned.’ And the first thing to do is to forget all the dreamy travel brochure ideas of wonderful baguettes on every street corner and learn how to tell the difference between a real baker’s shop and the rest. This may entail using a little more discernment and not necessarily entering the very first baker’s shop you see, but the result is often well worth the effort.