M&M’s with peanut butter, Heinz with pickle, Fanta strawberry… American products banned in Europe are sold in France

Illegal sales in grocery stores, supermarkets or online stores have been spotted in France, reveal France Inter and Marianne.

They are exotic, colorful… but not necessarily authorized. We have already seen them on the supermarket shelves: M&M’s with peanut butter, Heinz tomato sauces with pickles, Fanta sodas with strawberry flavor… These American products are available for sale in France, even though they are banned in the European Union, reveals France Inter, Thursday October 16, in partnership with the weekly Marianne.

These sweets, cereals and sodas, which children and adolescents are particularly fond of, are dangerous for your health. They are full of extremely harmful food additives like titanium dioxide (E171) or aluminum sulfate (E520).

Titanium dioxide caused “the appearance of precancerous lesions in the colon in animals after 100 days of exposure”, explains Eric Houdeau, researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) who studied titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide was banned in France in 2020 and in Europe in 2022 thanks to its research on animals.

These products are sold by the checkout counter in American supermarkets. In France, consumers discovered them through social networks and television series. To meet customer demand, they are sold illegally in grocery stores, supermarkets or online stores.

To try to limit these illegal imports into France, customs have increased controls over the past three years. More than 72 tonnes of goods have already been seized, a tiny quantity compared to the estimated quantity of products circulating in France. According to information from France Inter, around sixty references are currently on sale in France. As traders know that customs are increasing checks in the ports of Le Havre and Marseille, they now enter their goods through the port of Rotterdam.