This article by Mort Rosenblum originally appeared in GlobalPost. For the original article, click here.

PARIS, France — During the 1970s, I dropped in on Monsieur Turpin, a storied Parisian greengrocer and pheasant plucker. His walrus mustache bristled with indignation.

“Those people,” he said, nodding toward two young Americans chewing on baguettes as they passed. “They are walking while they eat.”

Alas, poor Turpin. Today, even the Louvre Museum has a food court for ambulatory grazing. Soon it will include those ubiquitous golden arches. A Big Mona with fries?

What began slowly in the 1970s is now a galloping, likely irreversible, scourge. France is losing its fabled affinity for good food.

In the country where four centuries ago Francois Vatel fell on his sword because the turbot was late for a royal banquet, frozen fish sticks are all the rage.

A glance down any supermarket aisle is evidence enough, with such ersatz food as thin cellophane-wrapped slices of bright yellow processed cheese.

That feeding frenzy of Julia Child lore inspired Americans — first in the 1960s, then again this year — to revive classic French recipes, but here a dwindling number of people bother to simmer a simple sauce.

Turpin used to wake at 4 a.m. to select each tomato he would sell off the trucks at Les Halles, Paris’ then-central food market. He taught me why the family dinner table is the heart of everything French.

Back then I began amassing old volumes and soon realized French food could be hazardous. If my shelves ever give way, I’ll be smashed flatter than a mallet-pounded escalope de veau.

Back in the 1500s, Catherine de Medici brought forks from Italy. Thus armed, French nobles hired cooks to put flatware to good use.

After the Revolution, jobless chefs opened eateries for common folk. Marie-Antoine Careme elevated good cooking to haute cuisine. Later, Auguste Escoffier codified it.

Perusing the books, I found Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s classic remark, underlined in red: “The discovery of a new dish means more to humankind than the discovery of a new star.”

I lingered over a 1937 equivalent of Cooking for Dummies by a Cordon Bleu master named Henri-Paul Pellaprat: “La Cuisine Froide, Simple et Pratique” (”Cold Food, Simple and Convenient”).

Opening photos show how to debone a chicken; stuff it with pork, fowl bits, ham, lard and truffles; truss it with surgical knots; and wrap it in a towel for the oven.

Others show the construction of chicken a la Neva in a not-quite-firm gelee and sauce Chaufroid (don’t ask). Nuclear fusion is more simple et pratique.

It is not over yet. Local markets still thrive. Imaginative young restaurateurs add new dishes to the old stalwarts at prices that don’t require a second mortgage.

Down Calorie Alley, side roads along the A6 autoroute from Paris through Lyon, a galaxy of several dozen Michelin stars cluster at flower-splashed inns and posh palaces.

More on food in France by GlobalPost:
Making a statement with chocolate
Love is blind
In Bordeaux, a glass half empty

But even in small backwaters, the new trend is clear. What with jobs and new styles of life, young mothers tend toward packaged plats and le fast food.

When McDonald’s first opened on the Champs-Elysees 30 years ago, a friend of mine heard a French first-timer ask for a Big Mac and add: “Not too well done, please.”

Now that particular McDo is the world’s busiest, one of more than 1,000 across the country. For years, France has been one of the chain’s fastest-growing markets.

In the small Provence city of Draguignan (where two McDos jam at lunch), I talked with Lucie Martin, who spent decades cooking school lunches in the nearby village of Ampus.

“You should see the disgusting garbage they feed the kids,” Lucie said. “It breaks your heart.”
She used to spend hours each day slicing real potatoes for her memorable gratin dauphinois and finding fresh vegetables as the seasons changed.

“Now it’s all flakes and powders from a conglomerate,” she said. “They use fish gravy for meat dishes and meat gravy for fish. There’s no taste so it doesn’t matter.”

Sodexho, the multibillion-dollar company that supplies industrial near-food to schools and institutions in 80 countries, is as French as Michelin or Paul Bocuse.

At the Draguignan market, I queried the usual suspects to see if the Julia Child phenomenon in America might have triggered some sort of renaissance.

Yves Vanweddingen, the brainy goat-cheese guy with an ex-wife from Ohio, pondered the question. “Child,” he said, “like the English word for kid? Never heard of her.”

His customers are aging, and even his own family hustles through meals that were once savored.

“Women have always worked in France,” Yves said, “but they used to work at home and could find time to stir a pot. No longer. Even among those who have time, few care.”

Whether in Provence or Paris, a fresh generation of can-opener kids is trading in a rich culinary heritage for sandwiches and snack food.

Among my favorite old tomes is the collected letters of Madame de Sevigny, the 17th century grande dame who went through goose quills and gigapots of ink at a furious pace.

La Sevigny was at Vatel’s last party. His body was still warm, she reported, when purveyors rushed in with the delayed seafood after a nightlong ride from the coast.

She details the menu of a Christmas dinner for 10 she put together at the Hotel Carnavalet in Paris.

Starters included soups and courts-bouillons, sliced smoked meats and sausages, pork tongues, warm pates and plates of fried this-and-that.

After roasted partridge and pheasant came amusing little larks, thrushes and ortolans. These last are delicate buntings, now nearly extinct. Diners put napkins over their heads to mask the crunching and spitting.

(As Francois Mitterrand neared death in 1996, his last meal with friends featured endangered ortolans; indulgent gendarmes standing guard looked the other way.)

Salmon, trout and carp appeared in elaborate forms along with fresh-water shrimps nestled among crabs in their shells. The desserts go on for pages more.

Most likely, Madame Sevigny did not ask if anyone wanted fries with that.

Top photo:
A member of France’s young Gaullists (RPR political party) (L) tries to distribute samples of French Roquefort blue cheese to customers outside the McDonald’s hamburger franchise on the Champs Elysees July 30. Mal Langsdon/REUTERS

Photo; Irish "Yes" campaigners celebrate in Dublin, 3 Oct 2009/Cathal McNaughton)

Europe has become increasingly selfish and materialistic in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the heads of the Roman Catholic bishops' conferences across Europe said at the end of their three-day annual meeting at the weekend.  "The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious," they said in a statement after the session in Paris. They cited materialism, individualism and relativism as major challenges facing European society.

The bishops' sober assessment contrasted with the upbeat mood that the overwhelming "Yes" vote in Ireland's Lisbon Treaty referendum created.  It must be noted they drew up their statement before they'd heard the news from Dublin on Saturday. And their statement ended with a note of Christian hopefulness. Still, their diagnosis is so fundamental it's hard to imagine they would have changed much in the text.

Here's the way they put it:

"All that has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a great stepping stone in the European adventure... (but) twenty years later, we now see that the incredible European project, with a strong ethical basis, has greatly weakened... The hopes placed on building Europe have not so far been fulfilled. Here we take note of the influence of several factors:

• "The development of the European Union has gone hand in hand with a growth in consumption, at least for some people. The mere constant acquisition of goods will never fill people's hearts... The rules of the market and competition will never give birth to the ideal.
• "Present society wishes to give to the individual every possible opportunity to exercise individual choice and to seek personal fulfilment. In doing so it risks simply locking the individual into the defence of self-interest or acquired benefits... A society in which each individual, each group, each nation defends only their own vested interests cannot but be the jungle... We should not be surprised then if mafia and terrorist organizations thrive against this background...
• "A pluralistic society often risks being tempted by relativism, and particularly by ethical relativism. Each person sets their own norms and claims their own rights. Social life can only rest on common rules, on a vision of humanity that does not change according to shifting lobbies or opinion polls...

"The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious. Low birth rates and the future of its demography do not lead to optimism. However, we do not intend to be prophets of doom. Things are not necessarily doomed to get worse! Our faith calls us turn our attention to the European society in which we live, and to gaze on it with hope."

Do you think materialism, individualism and relativism are the main problems nagging Europe? If so, will it take more than the feel-good factor from the Irish vote to put "EU show... back on the road" again?

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The European-Mediterranean summit in Paris might have produced grand projects ranging from cleaning up the Mediterranean sea to using North Africa’s sunshine to generate power. But that is is not what it will be remembered for.

It will be remembered for the glorious welcome it bestowed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until yesterday was persona non-grata in the West, an autocrat leading a pariah regime, which many believe orchestrated the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.  

Assad was the star of the show, which sealed a new detente between Syria and Europe, with the Syrian and Israeli leaders sitting at the same table for the first time.

So what happened? And why are things finally looking up for Bashar? What lay behind this sudden turn in his fortunes? Are Bashar and his government really off the hook?       Is it all forgotten because Assad relaunched indirect peace talks with Israel and gave his blessing to a Qatari-mediated accord that ended Lebanon’s political crisis, allowing the election of a Lebanese president? After all, the new government was in Syria’s favour.

Or is it as some experts commented because Assad proved once again, like his father late President Hafez al-Assad before him, that there won’t be any stability or peace in the region without Syria, that Syria –  with its strong links with Iran, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, the Islamist Hamas movement and a string of hired guns — still  calls the shots and could act as a spoiler if ostracised? 

Some observers even speculated that there was collusion in Damascus for the killing in February of Imad Moughniyah, the chief of Hezbollah’s security network and an agent of Iran who topped the U.S. most wanted list for 25 years.

Those familiar with Syrian techniques joked that Syria keeps resorting to the same old get-out-of-jail-free-cards and dodges to get out of crises with the West.

In the 1980’s,  for example, Syria was shunned by the West for its alleged links to an El Al bombing plot in London, its alliance with Iran against Arabs in the Iran-Iraq war, and because of its support for Shi’ite Islamist bombings of U.S. and French targets in Lebanon.

Yet it regained its place in the Arab fold –  and the good grace of Washington – by joining the U.S.-led alliance that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Syria was well rewarded - the US gave it a free hand to operate in Lebanon and Arab states gave aid and investment.  
Syrian journalists accompanying Assad were delighted by their leader’s confident performance at the Elysee Palace. He shared a table with Sarkozy, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and the Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Yet most journalists directed their questions to Assad.

Heading out of the palace one Syrian journalist joked with a colleague: “Our Lebanese friends will be upset because the story is no longer the Hariri tribunal”.

Assad and his glamorous wife Asma savoured their moment of glory. Both were invited to stay on for Bastille Day.

“Bashar is here to stay…It is a very different situation. We saw lots of self-assurance and self-confidence. He was conducting himself with a statesman-like appearance,” one analyst said.  

Is Syria back in the fold or is full rehabilitation a long way off? Has Assad outsmarted Syria’s critics?