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France: Crunchy Con Nation

In America and England, you are what you think about eating. Tell me where you stand on Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden and (with the exception of a handful of “Crunchy Cons” and another handful of grumpy left-wing nostalgists for whiskey and cigarettes) I can tell what the rest of your politics are. People […]

In America and England, you are what you think about eating. Tell me where you stand on Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden and (with the exception of a handful of “Crunchy Cons” and another handful of grumpy left-wing nostalgists for whiskey and cigarettes) I can tell what the rest of your politics are. People who are in favor of a new approach to food — even if that approach involves a return to heritage breeds and discarded farming methods — are in favor of a new approach to social life. But in France the philosophy of food does not break on such neat party lines. In France, the diehards for the traditional national cuisine tend to write for leftish magazines and newspapers, like Marianne and Liberation, while those most open to innovation from the exotic tend to be found in the pages of the center-right Le Point and Le Figaro. An organic garden at the Elysee Palace might be a sign of surging nationalism or of pluralist internationalism … it would be hard to know which in advance. … The politics of food in France cut haphazardly and unpredictably across party lines and allegiances; tell me what you think about eating, and I will tell you only that you are French.

— Adam Gopnik, from The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food

Three and a half more weeks until we leave for Paris!

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