European Food Culture

I’ll never forget the way my 8^th grade French teacher described the relationship the French have with food. She explained the shopping experience as a list of errands, stopping from shop to shop for one special item. Every time she spoke of how everyone would zip around with a baguette in their hands, everyone looked at that woman like she was a nut. However, after my first European adventure, I have to apologize to Madame Koehler, because everyone really does have a baguette in their hands! After learning more about the French food culture in writing my feature story, I learned that the French admire the ideal of “farm to fork," as one vendor at the market described to me. I pondered what happened to the United States when we decided to pump everything with genetically modified organisms. Sure, we can’t find anything wrong with it…yet. I’ll never forget when the press officer at the US Embassy in France described the lack of Genetically Modified Organisms as a fear of “Frankenfood” in European society. After learning more about food regulations, and their lack of fake products, I became increasingly jealous of the difference in quality of food here in the US to that of Europe, and dream of a day were Americans can appreciate real food again and leave the “Frankenfood” behind us.