Title: Frites surgelées.
I encourage your pardon? Sorry, that’s frozen chips to you non-French-speakers.
Age: Plus de 75 ans.
Cease this, and why are you talking in French anyway? As a result of frozen chips are present process a spectacular increase in France, the place farmers are so determined to fulfill the demand for ice-cold potato merchandise that they’re ripping up different crops to plant much more spuds.
Mon dieu! See, now you’re doing it!
So which uncouth nation are they promoting all these frozen chips to? It’s going to be the UK, isn’t it? Nope: it’s the French themselves, who’re mentioned to have developed an insatiable urge for food for the snack.
However that is France! House of bouillabaisse and boeuf bourgignon! Absolutely these gastronomic elites don’t eat such garbage? It appears the French are literally moderately eager on la malbouffe (junk meals) today. There’s been roughly a 25% rise within the French frozen chip market over current years, in accordance with La Voix du Nord, and so they’re not simply munching on the fashionable, slender French fry however the thick-cut British oven chip too.
Scandaleux! It’s apparently being pushed by French youth, who can’t be bothered faffing round within the kitchen. “Younger generations now not peel a lot,” is how Ward Claerbout, authorized and exterior affairs director for Belgian frozen chip large Agristo, places it.
It’s all of the fault of these pesky younger folks once more, I see. Isn’t the whole lot? However the speedy enlargement can also be being blamed on Dutch and Belgian farmers who, unable to purchase land in their very own international locations, are snapping up territory in northern France. Apparently, in Chip Valley, fields value €15,000 a hectare three years in the past at the moment are exchanging palms for nearly double that.
Sorry, in the place? Oh sure, Chip Valley – or La Vallée de la Frite because it’s turn into recognized. It’s the brand new Silicon Valley. Just for, erm, chips.
And simply as profitable? In line with a report within the Occasions, the worldwide market in frozen potato merchandise is predicted to develop from $7.27bn in 2023 to $89.51bn in 2029!
Individuals are going to be consuming greater than 12 occasions as many chips in six years’ time?! That’s not going to assist the weight problems disaster. Calm down, the Occasions bought their sums unsuitable: the precise 2023 determine is $67.27bn, so we might be consuming much more chips, however not taking part in a world version of Man v Meals.
Do say: Obtained any McCains to go together with this duck à l’orange?
Don’t say: Je préfère le riz.
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