They’re ready for this gelée.
Faithful French traditionalists have to be feeling salty over the newest chilling culinary change within the land of confit and coq au vin, where young anti-gourmands are said to be falling hard for frozen frites.
The gauche gastronomic glow-down is a component of an overall recent pivot to junk food in France — with processed potatoes rocketing so quickly in popularity, farmers are tearing out other crops and planting more spuds, The Guardian reported.
“Young generations now not peel much,” shrugged a rep for Agristo, a frozen food manufacturer based in neighboring Belgium.
In accordance with French media, there’s these days been a 25% uptick in frozen sales.
And the frite-ning trend is barely expected to proceed, industry watchers say — in accordance with an earlier report, the worldwide frozen tater market will grow from $67.27 billion in 2023 to $89.51 billion by 2029.
In France, the change is reportedly so pronounced, farmers are buying up territory within the northern a part of the country quickly enough to double the price of land in a handful of years.
On the core of the boom is a region now often known as La Vallée de la Frite — or, Valley of the Fries.
The French love of fast food isn’t exactly latest — the country’s embrace of McDonald’s, or “McDo,” has long been an open secret, resulting in more outlets of the Golden Arches than some other European country.
“An appetite for the American lifestyle has inbuilt France, a giant appetite,” said Xavier Expilly, president and founding father of French consulting firm EXPM.
And well before the newest shift, home cooks across the country may very well be found prowling the aisles of Picard, a Trader Joe’s-like supermarket chain — with the same cult following — that deals almost exclusively in frozen foods.
The nosh news comes as a handful of powerful potato processors find themselves slapped with lawsuits — alleging a conspiracy to artificially hike prices.
4 corporations – Lamb Weston, Canada-based McCain Foods, the J.R. Simplot Company and Cavendish Farms – currently control 97% of the market, antitrust lawsuits filed within the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in November have alleged.
Between July 2022 and July 2024, the tater titans allegedly sent the value of frozen potato products soaring 47% by colluding to lift prices, in accordance with court documents.
“When there are only a handful of players out there, collusion is simply too appetizing for these corporations to pass up,” one industry watcher said.
Representatives for the businesses earlier said the suits were without merit.
“We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against them,” Marc Doucette, vp of communications at Cavendish Farms, told The Post.
