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Episode: FRANCE

“Let Them Eat Cake!”

French cuisine carries within it an enigma even more mystifying than the Da Vinci Code. And that is even though French food contains more saturated fats than any other cuisine in the world the French have one of the lowest rates of heart attacks and heart disease in the world. How can this be? The secret is in the history of the food. And the history of the food is found in the regional history and archaeology of the country.

This episode traces the evolution of French food through different archaeological sites, and the eventual merging of foods and tastes culminating in perhaps the greatest food motivated revolution in the world – the French Revolution! As the peasants starved Marie Antoinette cried from the Palace of Versailles “Let them Eat Cake”. Although this is widely believed to be a myth, it demonstrates the level of importance that food carries in French history. And it also explains why Haute Cuisine has traveled so widely around the world as the French chefs in the employ of the aristocracy fled France for other parts of Europe and the colonies.

Many historians have argued that French cuisine was brought over from Italy with Catherine de Medici in the 1540’s when she married the French King Henri II. However, this episode goes a long way in dispelling this belief. Many of the archaeological sites prove that French cuisine date back from the Gallic states, through the Roman occupation, the invasions by Danish, Germans and English, the great advances during the Renaissance, climaxing in the French Revolution! Each of these groups brought their own home versions of cuisine with them which then merged with the local French.

Finally, we discover why it is that the French have one of the lowest heart disease rates in the world when diets high in dairy products and fats are considered a ‘killer’ in other parts of the world. Viva le France! Viva le Revolution!

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