TrailerMalbouffe by rebusparis
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: French chef takes on country's rise in junk food: A leading French chef has warned that 70 per cent of the country's restaurant food is now 'industrial fodder' as he launched a Jamie Oliver-style crusade against junk food. ¶ Michelin-starred gastronomic restaurants are a fig leaf that hide an army of French eateries, including more and more chains, that sell poor-quality, often factory-produced food more often than not touted as "fait maison" – home-made. ¶ That is according to Xavier Denamur, 48, the self-styled white knight of wholesome, traceable, French food prepared in-house and supposedly the country's trademark. ¶ Mr Denamur is the iconoclastic star of République de [la] Malbouffe (Republic of Crap Food), a documentary released on Wednesday directed by Jacques Goldstein, which claims to investigate the "smokes and mirrors behind … a state with lobbyists but no parliament, with restaurants but no chefs, with farmers but no fresh food. A noxious regime whose motto could be opacity, precarity, obesity." ¶ The film squarely blames falling gastronomic standards in restaurant kitchens on President Nicolas Sarkozy's move to cut restaurant sales tax from 19.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent. ¶ Mr Denamur is filmed berating Christine Lagarde, the former French finance minster and now head of the International Monetary Fund, for playing into the hands of fast food chains and powerful food industry lobbies. » | Henry Samuel. Paris | Wednesday, January 01, 2012
