Let Them Eat Cake: 4 in 10 Poorest French Cutting Meals Amid Soaring Food Inflation

PARIS, FRANCE - MARCH 07: A demonstrator carries an anti-Macron placard at a protest durin
Aziz Karimov/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Over four in ten people in the lowest income bracket in France are skipping meals to make due as food inflation has increased over 15 per cent over the past year, alone, a survey has found.

According to an Ifop study for “La Tablée des chefs”, 42 per cent of the poorest French people have begun sacrificing meals, while just over half of respondents said that they have reduced meal portion sizes in order to cope with soaring food inflation.

The survey, which polled 1,007 people among the 30 per cent of the population earning minimum wage or less, went on to reveal that a staggering 79 per cent restricted their food purchases in some way as a result of increased prices, with food inflation climbing over 15 per cent in the year to March, the La Depeche newspaper reported.

Commenting on the findings, the director of the public opinion department at Ifop in France, Jérome Fouquet said: “They do not necessarily reduce the quantities of food at all meals but it comes back regularly.”

“There, it is an even more modest population that has exhausted all arbitrations and is forced to reduce commodities,” he added.

The survey comes amid widespread protests, labour union strikes, and violent riots sweeping France over the past month after French President Emmanuel Macron’s government used a constitutional loophole to pass his pension reforms through the National Assembly without a vote.

While international observers have frequently pointed to the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old as the cause of the chaos, in reality, the move from Macron was merely the spark that lit the tinderbox of the already existing anger at the globalist government in the Élysée Palace. The French, like many other nations, suffered under years of lockdowns, which spurred the inflationary spiral and saw the inequality gap grow. This was quickly followed by the war in Ukraine, which has further exasperated the economic woes across Europe.

Indeed, although protests and riots have ramped up over the past month after the nation was galvanised against the pension reforms, the labour union strikes around which the protests have been organised began in earnest last Autumn over demands that the government increase the salaries of public workers amid the cost of living crisis.

Despite handily securing victory in last year’s presidential election, there has been growing resentment against Mr Macron, who is now widely castigated as out of touch and the “president of the rich“. The fact that Macron — a former Rothschild banker — used the economic crisis to push through his pension reforms rather than focussing on the economic struggles of millions of citizens, only further confirmed this perception.

The protests have largely been driven by left-wing activists and trade unions, however, it appears that the true victor of the anger against the Macron administration has been the populist right. Veteran political firebrand Marine Le Pen, who lost last year’s election to Macron by double digits, has seen her popularity soar in contrast, with a poll this week finding that the National Rally (RN) politician would best Macron by 10 points in a head to head matchup.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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