The Age of Organic

Forget outdated guidebook information. Let's look at what Parisians and the French are actually eating right now. The first trend: the French, famously picky about food, have a strong preference for organic.

In French supermarkets and markets, organic products carry one of two certification marks. The logo with "AB" is administered and certified by the French Ministry of Agriculture, and the leaf inside a ring of stars by the European Union. Some products carry both logos, others just one. To earn certification, ingredients must meet a long list of strict conditions. To name just a few: at least 95 percent of the product must be organic, it must be GMO-free (no genetically modified crops or seafood), and it must contain no added chemicals. There are other requirements too, such as compliance with animal welfare standards. Because the bar is so high, you can trust a product on the strength of those two logos alone, which makes shopping easy and lets you buy more ethically. The only downside is that it costs a bit more.

Organic is called Biologique in French, usually shortened to Bio. It's an important criterion for the French when choosing food, and on restaurant menus you'll often see the logo in small print next to a dish.

Why such a strong preference for bio? France is one of Europe's leaders in environmental protection, and ordinary citizens, especially millennials and younger generations, feel the importance of the environment and act on it. As an aside, the bio trend is closely tied to the rise of vegetarianism. France is a big meat-eating country, but raising livestock for food inevitably generates pollution at every step, and cattle are said to be the biggest polluters, followed by pigs, with poultry the least harmful. So young people who care about the environment are cutting back on meat or giving it up entirely.

There are also supermarket chains that sell only organic products, including Naturalia, La Vie Claire and Bio c'est bon. Everything in them is certified organic, so you can shop without second-guessing, and they stock just about everything. Naturalia probably has the most branches in Paris, so drop in and see for yourself. You'll be surprised how many organic products exist.

One caveat is that since the pandemic, prices have risen sharply, and for several years now consumption of pricier organic products has been shrinking. The guide first came to France in 2017, and she can feel that organic was more popular then than it is today. Whether the economy will recover enough to send the organic sector back up remains to be seen.