I would agree with you, the French dairy product areas in supermarkets are often one of the largest sections in the shop !
French full cream UHT has a sightly unpleasant taste, but the écrémé is tolerable once you get used to it - and probably a good way of getting calcium if you are concerned about reducing your fat intake.
The French seem to like their beverages without milk. But they tend to make up for it by eating large amounts of cheese. À chacun son goût!
We've been visiting our house in Brittany for over 20 years, and certainly there used to be a problem getting fresh milk years ago. Now all the supermarkets have it, and the tiny grocer in our village has farm produced milk during the summer (when there is a demand from visitors to the campsite). We still have the cream problem, and get creme entiere in cartons when we want to whip it. Beyond that I actually find a wider range of milk products than in the UK - lait ribot, faiselles, creme fraiche before it was widely available in UK, wider range of yoghurts, wider range of butters, - or is that just Brittany?
John - I don't think your comment about Androids is appropriate and I too find it offensive. I suggest you edit your comment to remove it please
We all know that Patak pastes are nothing like Indian food and in India what is eaten as their food in Europe, the UK particularly, does not as such exist. The diversity is vast but that is not my point. It is here and used.
I find your choice of expression for describing the French verging on the xenophobic and your closing sentence tends to confirm that. The bit about the shotgun in the garden is actually offensive. If you have such disdain for the French how on earth do you dare to spend time here? What you said is out of place here, so please do not go down that route again.
Simon, much as I disagree with you re le Boeuf, I do agree with you about protectionism and it is also cultural France is a very proud country and does tend to be reluctant in embracing anything foreign and British in particular.
However slowly their tastes and world view are changing and perhaps they will come to like Marmite in the end, given its name almost certainly originates in the French soup 'petite marmite'. I cannot stand the stuff but know many people, including a few French friends, who love it.
As for milk, well that is a post-WW2 thing. Although rural people in cattle farming areas just about everywhere in the world drink milk, people elsewhere and especially urban people hardly ever touched it. After the war, the free milk for children in countries where food supplementation was necessary put milk drinking on the map. The USA saw the virtues and followed suit along with several other countries. It has now become embedded in many food cultures but several European countries, mainly southern ones, have never got far past milk shakes, milk in coffee and other things like pouring creams and 'runny' yoghurt. That, according to nutritionists, is changing quite fast and children particularly are being encouraged to drink it. Even in countries with high levels of lactose intolerance, for instance throughout SE Asia, milk is becoming slowly but surely easy to find as people increasingly drink cappuccino and similar coffees as well as have started to give it to children young enough to make the lactose tolerant.
It is like the strangely northern phenomenon of preserving fruit in the form of jam or marmalade that did not really exist in the lower half of Europe but is now commonplace. 'Bonne Maman' gives the impression of being traditional but Jean Gervoson set up the company after WW2 to make and sell plum confiture and the range only diversified at the end of the 1960s. So give France a chance.
Milk is coming on in leaps and bounds, their tastes are changing too and suddenly I am no longer surprised to notice such examples as Patak's ready made pastes in friends' kitchens which probably three or so years I never saw. As for having a lecture on the virtues of different orange marmalades that I had just before Christmas, well what can we say?
Having lived on several continents one learns to adapt, its interesting to note that the brits are the ones that miss things the most. What I missed was marmite I went without for 30 years or so,its nice to be able to get it again.
When I was living in Corsica, I did manage to find lait cru in the local Bravo supermarket - that was back in 1987 !
Just depends on where you live. Here in the Puy de Dome, we are starting to see individual farms or small retail outlets (Casino, Huit a Huit, etc) installing fresh milk dispensers. Whilst I dislike UHT, I have accustomed myself to its strange taste, but still prefer fresh if I can get it. The milk industry in France is very powerful, and take a dim view of fresh milk, which is, along with unfounded French paranoia about bacterial counts in fresh milk, probably one of the reasons why it is not more widely available. Note that "lait cru" is unpasteurised, so it should be consumed quickly, and if most French I have encountered are to be believed, boiled to death before being consumed.
Fresh milk freezes and you can buy unpasteurized cream, crème cru from some small producers. We can buy it from Atac in Cluny.
As with the beef, I buy direct from the supplier (when I'm in the Charente of course). In Paris I have to put up with any old pre packed supermarket tosh (both beef and milk).
Milk and some cheeses comes from a lady who has a dairy herd, beef from a friend who has a herd of Limousine cows.
We have never really seen milk as a drink for anyone but children - café au lait is just for breakfast & even then not for everyone. Growing up in the very S of France milk wasn't part of my diet, nor was butter, though yoghurt was; cheese was from sheep or goats more than cows, and you ate it every single day with green salad - very unlike Scotland where I was at school and where the only meal/breaktime without a huge jug of milk on the table was lunch.
But dietary habits are changing.
Everywhere has local produce shops and health food stores. We have two of the former locally. We have to pay a bottle deposit, then we clean the bottles for exchange for full ones, paying for the milk only. Within a few bottles it squares with the supermarket stuff then in a month or so is cheaper.
Cream, moot point but it takes almost detective work. I find that by using different supermarkets and experimenting I eventually find exactly the types and quality I like/use. Double cream is difficult, Crème fraîch is as close as you get but it cannot be whipped, so fixe chantilly fixe crème entière substitutes well. The double cream trick is to take the fraîch and entière creams and blend them to get a double cream quality. It has frustrated me no end but I got there in the end.
I remember taking a small flask of milk into my husband when he was in hospital so that I could make him a cup of tea and he could then drink the rest that evening. A nurse asked me what it was and the look of horror on her face suggested I was leaving him arsenic. Yet the French are happy to eat raw meat and oysters!
Well Im up in the north and we have fresh milk, and cream etc but it doesnt last long, ie open a bottle today even kept in the fridge will go off probably within two days. We also had one of those dispensing milk machines set up outside a big well know supermarket a couple of years ago but it didnt stay long, only a matter of weeks, presumably because there was no demand, I have beard and have no idea how true this is … The french dont use fresh milk etc because they think if its not treated it will kill them !!
Blame Pasteur, if he was an Englishman you wouldn't see UHT on sale anywhere.
Real milk goes off but can still be drunk (curds and whey) cottage cheese etc. UHT just goes rancid.
http://cheesaholics.blogs.com/cheesaholics_anonymous/2006/03/cheesaholics_an_3.html
THings are changing. Here in the Rhône there are fresh milk dispensers appearing outside small supermarkets which will give you fresh milk (and a bottle if you haven't brought one). Never have liked UHT milk from an early age.