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The U.K. Telegraph is reporting today that France has banned tomato ketchup from its elementary schools. This has nothing to do with the ingredients of ketchup–it’s an effort to protect the French culinary culture.
The article reports:
“We have to ensure that children become familiar with French recipes so that they can hand them down to the following generation,” he (Christophe Hebert, chairman of the National Association of Directors of Collective Restaurants) explained this week. “We have to stop children from being able to serve those sauces. Children have a tendency to use them to mask the taste of whatever they are eating.” Which, if meals in French schools are anything like those on which we were brought up, is surely the point.
On the surface, this is a bit much, but I actually understand it. A child’s eating habits and taste are developed when they are young. If you want a child to grow up appreciating the complexity of French cooking, taking the ketchup off of the table is a really good idea. Most children, given the opportunity, will pour ketchup on anything on their plate that isn’t moving. Taking the ketchup off the table will give French children a chance to appreciate the fantastic heritage of French cooking. This isn’t the nanny state intervening for health reasons–this is a country attempting to preserve an invaluable heritage.
