France Bans Ketchup from Schools

France is playing ketchup.

The food police are out in force in France in the form of the French government which is banning ketchup from schools. Students can put it on one bet-you-can-guess-which-one side dish but in general its now taboo. Why? It seems more of an attempt to protect French culture from those evil, pernicious, foreign cultural gastronomic invasions (read that U-n-i-t-e-d S-t-a-t-e-s’ food influences):

The Los Angeles Times reports:

First France built a wall around its language to protect it from pernicious Anglo-Saxon invaders. Now it is throwing up a shield against another perceived threat to its culture and civilization: ketchup.

In an effort to promote healthful eating and, it has been suggested, to protect traditional Gallic cuisine, the French government has banned school and college cafeterias nationwide from offering the American tomato-based condiment with any food but — of all things — French fries.

As a result, students can no longer use ketchup on such traditional dishes as veal stew, no matter how gristly, and boeuf bourguignon, regardless of its fat content.

Moreover, French fries can be offered only once a week, usually with steak hache, or burger. Not clear is whether the food police will send students to detention if they dip their burgers into the ketchup that accompanies their fries.

“France must be an example to the world in the quality of its food, starting with its children,” said Bruno Le Maire, the agriculture and food minister.

Yes. France has a food minister.

To the outside world, it seems as if the United States has a food minister, too. This guy:

No, that isn’t one of the candidates running for the 2012 Republican nomination. That’s Ronald McDonald.

All over the world the U.S. has become identified with fast food.

I was writing from Madrid for the Christian Science Monitor in the late 70s when I did a story on a cultural development: the opening of the first American fast-food restaurant there, Burger King. The launch was huge with “It takes two hands to handle a Whopper” (“Necessitas dos manos a zamparte un Whopper”) being blared in Spanish on the radio. Burger King served wine at its restaurants, in keeping with Spanish tastes, and started quickly attracting young people who had gone to locally owned places that tried to do American fast food.

When I did the Tijuana beat for the San Diego Union in the 1980s, I did a feature on a American-style pizzeria there started by a Mexican who had worked in the United States. Today, Mexico has lots of American fast food chain restaurants – hamburgers, chicken, Taco Bell (a welcome break from Mexican food for residents of Mexico) and, yes, Dominoes.

France banning ketchup? Sounds like a lot of crepe to me.