At first I thought I was reading an article from The Onion...

[BlueCross]

Well, the French have finally done it.   They banned ketchup.

OK, Frenchies, step up to the plate and sweep this under the rug before all hell breaks loose (Ya!  Three mixed metaphors in only16 words!)

[AcdQueen89]

.......and they call the japanese xenophobic

[Dourak]

Yeah, ketchup has a bad image in France, because it's from outer-space, in a certain way.
Old french people (and only them, because every "young" people I know simply can't eat without ketchup ...) are persuaded that it can't be mixed with food. It's the same for Coke actually.
I know some "old" men, who're always saying "You're quite a crazy dude (okay, maybe they don't used those terms, but hey, I'm the one who's tellin' the story, right ?!) to drink that kinda shit, y'know ? (and okay, they maybe don't use this accent too. But, you'll never know, right ?!)"
But only countryside peoples do that now.
They are also the only one who are buying french cigarettes, and not Malboro or Lucky Strikes, or else.

Maybe it's hard to figure it out, but french haven't already accepted the fact that yeah, you invaded the entire world with your music, your comics, your cigarettes and your food. And I'm not telling that's a bad thing, I read all my young times Uncle Scrooge and Siperman stories, and I'm just crazy about hamburgers.
But the fact is, would an american cafeteria let their students eat munster cheese or snails ?
Could be funny but I don't think so.

Oh, and if that's forbidden in french cafeterias, I guess that's because their are in war with obesity.
Soda machines are forbidden too, and french administration are worried about the fact that most of the young people eat most of the time junk food, which is most of the time mixed or based of ... ketchup.
Reversed logic.
Yeah, they don't understand nothing.


And we don't call japanese xenophobic (even if imigration policy of Japan is quite strict), most of the time only the russian and american.



edit: I haven't read the text in my first post.
So I will make some little corrections :

"The rules leave young ketchup lovers here little choice. French schoolchildren are not allowed to bring home-prepared lunches to school and must either eat in the cafeteria or go home for lunch."

This is complete bullshit. I had, during 3 years, eat sandwishes just in front of my old college. Yes, in the smocking corner. And it's was allowed.


"Six million children eat in canteens every day, but 1 in 2 of them is still hungry when they leave," he said. "Nutritional rules are neither applied or controlled. We are making them obligatory and we will be keeping an eye on the menus."

They still hungry because a lot of them dont finish their dishes. Yes, french meals at cafeteria ar far, far away from "gastronomie".

"We absolutely have to stop children from being able to serve those sorts of sauces to themselves with every meal. Children have a tendency to use them to mask the taste of whatever they are eating."

Yes, they do. Always a gastronomy problem.


After a little 5 minuts research on the internet, with french words, I found that :


"Quatre ou cinq plats devront être présentés à chaque repas, dont nécessairement un plat principal comprenant une garniture, et un produit laitier", indique le décret. "Il doit y avoir plus de produits laitiers, plus de fruits au dessert, le moins possible de friture, et une alternance entre viande et poisson dans la semaine", précise le ministre au JDD.

L'eau et le pain devront être mis à disposition sans restriction. Mais le sel et les sauces (mayonnaise, vinaigrette, ketchup) ne seront, en revanche, pas en libre accès mais servis en fonction des plats.

Traduction :

"4 or 5 dish will be proposed at every meals, with necessarily one main dish, containing a side dish, and a milk product" say the decree. "We must serve more milk product, more fruits at the dessert, the less possible frying, and an alternativ between meat and fish during the week", added the minister at the JDD (never heard of that.).

Water and bread will be left at uses without restriction. But salt and sauces (mayonaise (a eggs-based sauce), vinaigrette (every french got a different way to do vinaigrette, it's a kind of acid sauce for salad.), ketchup) will not be at open acces, but served with certain dishes."


So ketchup isn't the only one to be aimed here.
Sorry for bad english uses in this particullary post. I was writting that a first time, and after a fu%$@ manipulation I lost all my modificated text ... and in France it's 3:28 AM.
It's not a chavinistic post. But I'm pretty sure the original text was according to the ketchup interdiction too many disciminative willingness. French are nombrilist, but not as much.

But I will be very interrested if we can discuss about how american/english/anstralian see french people, and how we seeing you !

[Solwyn]

But the fact is, would an american cafeteria let their students eat munster cheese or snails ?

I think there's a cultural difference here. In America, you can bring anything from home that you want, and as long as it doesn't break any substance control laws (alcohol, drugs, etc) then you can eat it. Sure, if you're like me and your mom was a hippie, you get made fun of for eating alfalfa sprout sandwiches with home-made organic mayo.  But you can still eat it.

In public school, at least, they serve pretty basic faire in the cafeteria (rectangular cardboard-tasting pizza slices, chicken nuggets (?), steak fingers, "lasagna" casserole, etc). Some schools have fast food brought in from nearby places or even have vendors in the cafeteria. My school was very small (graduating class of 40 something, I think it was 42 but I could just be remembering it that way because of hitchhiker's guide), and we got taco bell, subway, and chick-fil-a in our school halfway through my senior year. Subway was actually reasonably priced and much healthier than most of the crap they brought in, ironically.

Now all that being said, I think the reason we're so fat here is that we don't take food nearly as seriously. The concept of protecting our cuisine is alien to us because we eat our food with one hand while swinging into the left-hand lane on our way to/from work.

[Dourak]

And I think french politician love to be chauvinist actually, because everything you describe here is not an alien way to do for us.
Even if it's not encouraged, we can bring food in college. Pizza slice, lasagna and burger are often serve, but only one day a week (if I'm remembering everything well.), like Thursday for bugers, monday for pizzas, etc ... but french goverment always want to insist about making fat-free products and healthy meals.  It's can be explain by the proximity we have with a lot of eastern country like Germany or Finland, country were they don't really laught about children obesity. And France is definitely a worried country. As an example, a lot of french think that we are one of the less powerfull country in the world. Economically at the 5th place in 2010. But we're always thinking (maybe because our goverment told us so many times) that we are lazzy people, that we have no economic place in the world, etc ...
So french people get upset about almost everything.

But if we except goverment and famous chiefs whims, we don't take food seriously at all, and how can we ?
Most of our food is composed of good meals badly cooked ... only a french can turn a delicious piece of beef into something don't eatable, just putting some red wine in it !

So yes, there is a protectionism in France, to "protect" (as animals are protected in a zoo) our culture (which is, in those due times, none.). But I don't thing the whims to banned sauces from french school cafeteria was one of this protection laws. If it was, why attacking vinaigrette ?

Just a question here ... did you try snails ?
I mean, with all the sauce who come with, of course !

[KMD]

Soda machines I can understand, but ketchup!? What the hell?? Its supposed to be quite healthy. The French confuse me.

[BlueCross]

Its supposed to be quite healthy.

Except for the massive doses of sugar and salt, and cooked so long that all the nutrients have had the bejeezus burned out of them.

But yeh, I like ketchup, too.

[AcdQueen89]

And we don't call japanese xenophobic (even if imigration policy of Japan is quite strict), most of the time only the russian and american.

I'm qualifying this on the fact that a large part of Japanese culture is to be modest and dont make a fuss. My college roommate spent a year in Japan and went back to teach English, tell tells me about the differences in treatment between full blooded Japanese people and the "outsiders." It's not necessarily a bad different, but it is a "you are not us" sort of different. It's a huge deal if you are even half Japanese. Then you look at the fact that the Japanese government does what it can to keep imports out to help promote the economy. NO ONE imports beef into Japan... then McDonalds came along and had to have "special burgers" imported.

That's what I'm calling xenophobic about Japan. Then every other thing I hear about the French government over the past few years seems to point at "ban AMERICAN food" or "ban this MUSLIM cultural/religious symbol" and the best explanations I can find on either is "blah blah blah (and it's not French)"

[Dourak]

If I agree about the fact that french goverment try to ban muslims cultural and religious symbol (using the laïc tradition of France as a discriminative way), I don't think that american food is banned. In school maybe, but that's the most pathetic part of France, saddly. The educational french system is a real disaster. For the rest, american restaurant opens every day, even if in those times, japaneses restaurants are more famous.
It's funny to see how people think that France is not open to american culture. Everytime you turn on the TV, 50% of the programs are american, There is huge comics place in every book shops. And culturaly, the american contribution to France is very huge in the 1980-1990, and increasing. Most of my friends speak english very well, are fans of american/movies/series/comics or american books.

For Japan, it's an island, who have a strange story about international relationship.
Their xenophobic issues can be easily explained. I know, this is not a excuse.

"and the best explanations I can find on either is "blah blah blah (and it's not French)""

Why did you means by that ?
I'm not very sure to understand it well.
You mean the best explanation about those subjets was not written in french ?
If that was what you wanted to say, how do you know it ?

[AcdQueen89]

what i mean by the "blah blah blah" is that they make an argument that sounds half valid then in an aside somewhere whisper that it's not french

[Dourak]

So that :

"Quatre ou cinq plats devront être présentés à chaque repas, dont nécessairement un plat principal comprenant une garniture, et un produit laitier", indique le décret. "Il doit y avoir plus de produits laitiers, plus de fruits au dessert, le moins possible de friture, et une alternance entre viande et poisson dans la semaine", précise le ministre au JDD.

L'eau et le pain devront être mis à disposition sans restriction. Mais le sel et les sauces (mayonnaise, vinaigrette, ketchup) ne seront, en revanche, pas en libre accès mais servis en fonction des plats.

For you it's not a real french article ?

[AcdQueen89]

speaking in french has nothing to do with it. every article i read about france changing laws for whatever reason involves an actual reason plus a comment about the frenchness of the subject.

ie: "we are banning ketchup because it is an unhealthy american condiment"

the statement uses the qualifier that is american and thus another reason to ban it.

[Dourak]

When you read in a article that "John, 67, as murdered is family before turning is weapon against himslef.", You dont say they added 67 to discriminate old people !
If they wanted to point at the "evilness" of american food, they will have forbidden not only keetchup, but fries with it. Don't think that french goverment will just do something just halfway through. They, saddly, don't do that anymore, since four years.

I think it will be interesting to read more articles, maybe from the other side, to take some objectivity. (Not only one newspaper who, obviously, analyse this french "reforme" only by a american point of view (ok, ketchup is banned, like other sauces too, and with just that fact, we can't say that's an "attack" to the american culture in France))
When I read the article proposed in the first post, and when I see what's written in french newspapers, I just say that, maybe, that's a little bit paranoid to say that :"Now it is throwing up a shield against another perceived threat to its culture and civilization: ketchup.".

They obviously don't live in France, and just consider us like people obsessed by our culture : wich is based on multiculturalism.
This is complete non-sense.

[Xerxes]

Also, if memory serves, ketchup is mostly salt, sugar, and colouring anyway. To me, it sounds like a positive move to ban it from school cafeterias. I don't eat the stuff much, so I may be biased, but it looks from the article like the French are trying to feed their children better - no bad thing! It seems logical to me that if you feed people better you will get better results. The chips once a week thing sounds good, too.

That said, I'd defend my right to have Lea and Perrins sauce on bacon sandwiches to the death.

[Dourak]

Hell, let's hope that french will never touch those.

Or so, I already can hear the yelling of revolution, "Cholesterol is fun !", "Fat is freedom !", and "You can rape-to-death the 35 hours, but not our freedom of eating !".
Hell, here's a good cause.