These are M&M’s with peanut butter, Heinz tomato sauces with pickles, Fanta sodas with strawberry flavor… Products sold by the checkout in American supermarkets. In France, consumers discovered them through social networks and television series. But these products are nevertheless banned in our country, because they are full of extremely harmful food additives, such as titanium dioxide (E171) or aluminum sulfate (E520).
Hervé is the manager of a store in the center of Paris specializing in American products: he sells peanut butter M&Ms in particular. “When we manage to find some at one of our importers, we hit it: a few boxes, to please our customers. They can only find them there: we hide from the internet and the networks, because we know that it is forbidden.”
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 drop in the ocean. According to our information, around sixty references are currently on sale in France.
Products containing possibly carcinogenic substances
Eric Houdeau, a researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, studied titanium dioxide. He explains its dangerousness to us: “What was discovered was that it had the ability to cause the appearance of precancerous lesions in the colon in animals, after 100 days of exposure.”
It is thanks to his research on animals that titanium dioxide was banned in France in 2020 and in Europe in 2022. Except that traders have already found the solution. As they know that customs are increasing checks in the ports of Le Havre and Marseille, they now bring their goods through the port of Rotterdam.
France
