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Of GMOs, McDomination and Foreign Fat: Contemporary Franco-American Food Fights

Ohio State University, USA, willging.1{at}osu.edu

This essay examines some recent developments in the food market and in eating habits in France and the anxieties that these developments — blamed by many on the forces of `Americanisation' — appear to be provoking among many French men and women. The specific developments it discusses are (1) the increasing pressure by the American government to force France and the European Union to import genetically modified organisms and hormone-treated beef; (2) the astonishing growth of the fast-food industry in France over the last several years in particular; and (3) the equally astonishing increase over the same period in the obesity rate there, especially among children. This essay argues that the presumed Americanisation of one of the most emphatically and enduringly French aspects of that nation's identity, its cuisine (and perhaps, more importantly, its culinary customs) has proven even more difficult for the French to `swallow' than that of other national domains, such as industry, cinema or even politics. This is so because this particular American `invasion' seems to constitute a penetration not only of national and local borders and public and private spaces, but also, more alarmingly, of individual, biological bodies.

Key Words: fast food • food • French—American relations • trade • obesity

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