Cost of food around France

[Gardengirl]

I find that fish and meat are expensive here, but see whenever I shop at the fish stall or in my usual butcher's that people are buying large amounts of both fish and meat - much more than I would ever buy. They are local, don't appear to be wealthy, (and surely all the other customers apart from me can't all be wealthy!) and mostly stand there writing out cheques or using credit cards for what seem huge sums to me.

While queuing at the fish stall at the market on Wednesday I got into conversation with a woman who lives in Paris, and was staying in our town for a week. She was shocked at the price of fish. She reckoned that cod fillet (24€ per kilo) was almost twice the price she would pay at home, and some fish were definitely twice her usual price. She was shocked, and wondered how people could possibly pay those prices.I mentioned about high meat prices, and she held forth on that too. My butcher is even more expensive, but she hadn't seen that one as they are is closed for the family's annual holiday. I go to him because his meat is better, less gristly etc.

She said she couldn't understand why prices were so high, especially fish prices, as we aren't that far from the sea here.

Do you notice huge differences in prices for meat, fish and other basic foods? I must add that we don't eat much meat either here or UK, but we do enjoy fish, and also eat a lot of vegetables along with pulses.

PS  I can't seem to find kale, which I was advised to eat by my UK optician, and which we've become used to in UK.. 

[NormanH]

I know that frozen products are not as good as fresh, but they are easier to compare between countries:

I tend to buy frozen fish from Picard

http://www.picard.fr/Modules/LaBoutique/les_filets_de_poissons_qualite_sans_arete171/Produits/filets_de_cabillaud_sans_arete1178.html

I suppose this might be compared to Sainsbury's

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1267175323670

so the price difference is pretty noticeable (per kilo)

[Tricia]

For fish - the price can vary drastically from week to week eg. cod fillet: one week 18€ per kilo, and the next it was on promo for 9€ per kilo. And I don't think it was last week's leftovers frozen and then put out again. It seemed fresh.Don't like frozen fish.

I usually buy cheaper fish such as perche du Nil or lieu noir, or julienne.

Don't know about meat as I rarely buy it - we eat our own chickens;

[Pommier]

Gosh - you're paying more (much more!) than I would for cod. I only buy when it's a good price - a few days ago we bought fresh cod fillets at Leclerc for €6,74 a kilo - and very nice they were too!

[mint]

Clearly, Pommier, I shall have to come to live near you.  The cheapest I have seen cod fillets is around the 10 euros mark.

In the market, they are often 24 kilos.

It's a lovely fish but it does disintegrate so much when cooked that I find it quite hard to think of a way of cooking them in such as way as they stay whole and look nice.

[Gardian]

A lot, but by no means all of the fish down here comes from the Channel ports, hence much higher distribution costs. We rarely buy from the market fish stalls because of the prices, though things like mackerel are always reasonable.

Good quality meat is of course best from a local butcher, but you'll pay for it, especially the guys on Uzes market. Funnily enough though, Intermarche has a good local reputation (most of the stores have a resident butcher). Our neighbour speaks well of the one at Montaren, just down the road from you.

[Chancer]

Only the other night my friend was telling me that all the fish sold in Calais comes from the big and I believe only fish market in Paris, I have forgotten the name, and as usual with at least one or two more intermediaries in the chain the end selling price rockets.

[Gardengirl]

When I had the chat with the woman from Paris I was actually buying salmon, which isn't badly priced. [:)]

Thanks for that info about fish down here often coming from the Channel ports, Gardian. As the fish stall we buy from is also in Nimes and on the Med coast I imagined a lot of their fish was from there. I haven't bought fish from Intermarche, but our fish stall also has a shop by the Montaren Intermarche.

Thinking about it, where we've stayed on the west coast of Scotland, the chap owned a small island, and rented out rooms and cottages. However, the family had always been fishermen, and he went out a couple of times each day with his lobster pots. Almost all his lobsters were sent directly to London and the Cote D'Azur, and brought enormous prices; none were available to local pubs and restaurants! Dinner cooked by them including lobster, if wanted, was very reasonable. [:D]

[Frederick]

How can they justify 24 euros a kilo for cod ?   Earlier post mentioned comparrison with  Sainsbury's..there fillets of white fish frozen probably pollock is £3.73 kilo . I was there this morning and bought two basa fillets  the  100 grams price is 71p ...and they put it in  a cook bag sealed with herb butter ready for the oven ...  This fish comes from the far east  so has to be flow in  and its still sold at a reasonable price ...So why is the housewife in France is paying these high  prices  It does not make sense to me ...There must be some huge profiteering going on in the fish trade there ? 

[5-element]

Frederick - you might like to find out a little more about basa fish (panga) - this explains why it can be sold at ridiculously low prices. Unfortunately, there are often similar stories about very cheap food... someone pays the real price, somewhere.

http://www.dietmindspirit.org/2008/01/30/why-you-shouldnt-eat-this-fish-pangas-pangasius-vietnamese-river-cobbler-white-catfish-gray-sole/

[Gardengirl]

5-element, that sounds awful!

By the way, the price I quoted was for cod fillet; dos de cabillaud was 36€ - and was being bought by quite a number of people, and it was still that price when I passed this morning!

[Frederick]

http://www.seafoodimporters.com.au/news.item.php?pid=62   So who do we believe ?

Australia has 50 water monitoring stations on the Mekon and states the water is clean ... ? I have eaten Basa  on a number of occasiuons  and have never been ill ..Even Youngs sell it ready battered and boxed up in frozen food sections of the supermarkets and I would have thought a Fish company with their reputation would have made sure what they sold was fully tested and  found safe  for .their customers to eat ....I cant see them  buying in fish from some backstreet provider feeding them on harmful none fish food .as in the Diet Magazine article which seemed deliberatly written to scare by the way it was worded ...They sell so much  to Europe  if  hospital wards were full of poisened basa eaters I think  it would have been headlines by now .

[5-element]

This French TV video (18 minutes long, and worth every minute) will tell you all you don't want to know:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xo87j_quest-ce-quun-panga

Unfortunately, empty hospital wards are no evidence that such exploitative farming causes no damages to people or to the environment. All it shows is that you don't necessarily get food poisoning from pangas!

Really cheap food will always come at a cost: either to the person who eats it, to the environment, to the people who live nearby. Very often, to all three.

As they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch!!! (unless you grow it yourself[:)])

[mint]

Very well said, 5-e.  Yes, there IS always a price to be paid.

I gave up eating panga as soon as I found out about their farming. 

Luckily for me, I can always make some sort of fairly delicious meal out of tinned fish.

[Jo]

Have just put up with being screamed at by a customer who was disgusted that Tesco value shortbread biscuits are now 29p per packet instead of the 9p per packet they were before Christmas. Try explaining that it isn't possible to create a packet of biscuits for 9p!!! Your comment about there always being a price to be paid is, unfortunately, not common knowledge here! Wish people were better informed about the real cost of food.