By Keith Stewart

For Asterix fans, news that the little Gaul has sold out to American capital imperialism must be a huge blow. Asterix, who fought valiantly against the Roman invaders for years and became a symbol of French pride has just become the champion of McDoh, which is French for McDonald's. (Think Mac, and then Doh as enunciated by Homer Simpson). Instead of holding out, Asterix and his village mates have become sell outs.

Is this then the end of French food? Well, no. French food like most of the world's food is the result of years of cross cultural mixing. Let's face it, the chipped potatoes that are as much a symbol of French café food, especially as frites served with steak, are the same potatoes that McDonald's sell as French Fries around the world. And the Hamburger may be archetypically American, but its name came from the German sailors who ordered beef patties served in a bun while in New York on a stopover from their home port of Hamburg.

It is not the Americanisation of France that French patriots are up in arms about, claiming their identity is being stolen, but the industrialisation of food that is McDonald's modus operandi. Le Big Mac is about as much like a real hamburger as fish fingers are like fresh snapper fillets. But while fighting the industrial intrusion the French are doing themselves no favours by branding it a cultural conquest. The French themselves gave in to indusrialisation many generations ago, and they cannot blame the Americans for it.

Indeed, the most industrial wine of them all is the justly famous, and fundamentally French, champagne. Grown in vast monocultures, standardised and industrialised under strong corporate branding, its international success is dependent on the philosophy of industrialisation. The Australians and some New Zealand winemakers believe industrial winemaking is a south-west Pacific invention, but the Champenoise were a century and a half ahead of us in this one.

The irony of champagne's abiding Frenchness is that the great holy wine (that is wine with holes in it) is the product less of the French and more of the Germans who wandered across the border to get involved in the lucrative business of bubbles. Bollinger was originally German, as was Krug and Heidsieck and Moët was Dutch, which is almost German. Even the man who invented the way of making champagne clear was a German, Herr Müller being cellar master of the house of Clicquot.

And then there is that other emblem of Frenchness, the croissant. Actually invented by the bakers of Vienna to celebrate the Habsburg victory over the Ottomans who rode under the crescent banner, it was adopted by the French in the wake of Marie Antoinette, infamous French queen and native of Austria who was famous for her alleged comments on the bakery goods her subjects should eat.

If the call is that McDonald's hamburgers are foreign, then the croissont, too, should be sent off home. As mayonnaise should be returned to the Balearic Islands, brandy be sent packing to its Middle Eastern homeland, and crème Anglais be given back to the English.

If the French problem is industrial food, what about frozen croissants, pasteurised cheese (Pasteur was a Frenchman, after all) and coffee essence.

If the French don't like Asterix eating McDoh, they should stop eating it themselves. McDonald's profits from it French division are the healthiest in their European operation.