No, but he didn’t seem to put up much of a fight against it.
“Why should we have to diversify?”
Oh dear, oh dear.
Friends have a herd of Limousins. Youngster now grows hemp for insulation. They also have a business making ragouts etc in jars. And they run a B&B.
Other local farms have moved into brewing as a way of getting added value from their home-grown barley.
I’m sure some French farmers remain resolutely undiversified. But many of them are ensuring their business has a broader range of product than used to be the case.
4 Likes
Hi @George1 - thanks for sharing.
We did something slightly similar but on a much smaller scale. For us it has been fantastic and much better than expected.
It was very easy to navigate “red tape” as we employed a professional accounting firm who are extremely good value for money.
We now have our own business, nicely profitable (super low tax, as we are in an area of depression) not sure of the French term for this.
House prices in UK just sky rocketed so we sold a small farm and bought something 4.5 times bigger for 20% of the cost including fees.
Moved over in three truck & draw lorries for less than £6k and hey presto here we are nearly 5 years later enjoying the French weather, wine and locally produced food.
I say good luck to them and wish them all the best.
Duolingo will get them started, living here will ramp up the skills quickly.
No more processed foods unlike the UK who are killing agriculture IMO.
5 Likes
My heart bleeds for them, and I’m playing the world’s tiniest violin. Don’t they see that they’ve been living off the state for years in a rural idyll?
2 Likes
Without knowing what data was used fo build this map it just doesn’t match up with what I see people putting in their supermarket trolleys. Maybe not as bad as UK but still seems a lot of rubbish food.
4 Likes
Hello @JaneJones - I agree, we still see shoppers in France with some of these processed foods, but my thoughts are this is much less prevalent than in the UK, with a MacDee of KFC on every corner over there.
I comfort myself we can select the right foods mostly locally sourced so extremely lucky.
Those who choose the fast food industry . . . . . you can’t fix stupid.
Things can change catastrophically in a matter of hours these days with all the flooding, hailstorms,secheresse,political interference including the EU and the world in general. Never take what you have for granted, it can become one of the statistics as we have seen with the loss of cereal crops, vines, animals and poultry from diseases. People buy food they can afford and most often the better produced stuff costs twice or more than their budget allows so you can’t call them stupid, just surviving in many cases!
1 Like
Looking at labels, it seems that there is a lot less “junk” even in processed food here in France vs. the US. We pretty much buy whole foods here with the exception of cookies (biscuits?) and occasionally candy. The ingredients list for the cookies includes flour, sugar, eggs, butter, salt, lemon zest. In the US, cookies are full of unpronounceable ingredients as well as preservatives and oils. I’m not arguing that cookies are healthy, but at least here, they’re made of actual, identifiable food ingredients. I have no frame of reference for the UK.
2 Likes
UK food regs are 99% the same as France and the EU, thanks to our much-missed membership of the EU.
Fortunately the Tories didn’t dare to diverge from EU food standards (aka degrade UK standards) given that the EU makes up 62% of UK food exports.
1 Like
@ChrisMann well that’s good to know. The ingredients that are allowed in the US are appalling. Snack “foods” are not even food, honestly. Oreo Cookie ingredients: Sugar, unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate [Vitamin B1], riboflavin [Vitamin B2], folic acid), palm oil, soybean and/or canola oil, cocoa, high fructose corn syrup, cocoa (processed with alkali), baking soda, salt, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, chocolate. I don’t buy Oreos here, so I can’t compare, but I’m hopeful that they’re not this terrible. The cookies that I buy in the supermarket are usually local products so the ingredients list is very small. My husband is addicted to Walker’s Shortbread Fingers, which have a couple of extra ingredients, but still there’s no comparison to Oreos.
For us, it’s changed dramatically in the 18 years we’ve been here. In that time our local Lidl and Leclerc have completely reorganised their layouts. Far, far more chill cabinets and frozen cabinets with prepared foods in them. And in the same time we’ve watched French people (especially the young) balloon in size. 18 years ago, we could be certain that a fat family was British. Now, they are as likely to be French.
5 Likes
Not massively different in UK for Oreos, actually:
WHEAT flour, sugar, palm oil, rapeseed oil, WHEAT starch, fat reduced cocoa powder 4,7 %, glucose-fructose syrup, raising agents (ammonium carbonates, potassium carbonates, sodium carbonates), salt, emulsifier (SOYA lecithins), acidity regulator (sodium hydroxide), flavourings
No “enriched” flour, and glocose-fructose syrup instead of corn syrup seem to be the main differences.
Yikes. I’ll have to check the French ingredients for Oreos. I was actually shocked to see what is available in French supermarkets. Since I am retired, I have time to cook from scratch, so I haven’t actually checked most of the frozen and processed foods here.
Same as UK I think (i.e. meeting EU standards):
Farine de BLÉ, sucre, huile de palme, huile de colza, cacao maigre en poudre 4,5 %, amidon de BLÉ, sirop de glucose-fructose, poudre à lever (carbonates de potassium, carbonates d’ammonium, carbonates de sodium), sel, émulsifiants (lécithine de SOJA, lécithine de tournesol), arôme.
(Potential allergens are shown in bold in ingredient lists)
1 Like
Why Oreos?
Hmm… I’ve never been shocked, but the lighting does sometimes play havoc with my eyes.
If you don’t enjoy wandering around French supermarkets, check out the small producers.
Local shops are generally well worth a visit . Also, local markets will sell a wide variety of products.
@Stella just to compare the same. I picked Oreos at random.
We live in the boonies where choices are very limited. I go to the local markets when I can, but I don’t want to have to drive a lot - one of the many reasons that I moved to France is for the public transportation. We are only here temporarily, so when we choose a permanent town or village, it will be somewhere with a lot of options and more frequent market days.
I was shocked because I was led to believe that food was so much more healthy in France, and in Europe in general, than in the US. And it is - I was just surprised to see the amount of processed food that is available here. Just a result of not traveling all that much on my part.
1 Like
@ChrisMann thank you! I’ll stick with the local cookies with the 5-6 ingredients.
@Motherrobyn
When you finally settle down in France, you’ll have such fun discovering local suppliers/bakers etc etc
I have visited all sorts of artisanal growers/outlets. Seeing how something is grown/harvested/cooked/whatever can be fascinating and as for the edibles… yummy! Always nice to know/find out what “isn’t” used in the process… no nasties.
Yes, it’s changed dramatically. Although we haven’t lived here as long as that, we’ve visited almost every year for 3 to 4 weeks for around 35 years and the changes (and not just in foodstuffs) is large. But then, societies do change and although we might not like it, it’s inevitable.