Gastronationalism

See here for food historian Rachel Laudan's post on French laws regarding foie gras.

The laws protect f.g. as part of the "gastronomical heritage of France," yet the way the stuff is created (and where it is consumed, which is to say here in the U.S. and everywhere else people have more money than they know what to do with) bears little semblance to "heritage."

Unless of course French farmers of antiquity had machines that could force feed a duck (not a goose) in a matter of seconds?

I know Americans are quick to forget our food history in the face of propaganda from the industry and government and often a combination of the two, but France? Isn't this the country where a mustachioed sheep farmer drove a tractor into a McDonalds while smoking a pipe?