FRANCE 24 is launching a series of articles this week that examines the cocktail of contaminants increasingly found in everyday food.
A few months ago, Laura* was quietly scrolling through her social media feeds when a word she’d never heard before started to pop up: “cadmium”. “I’d never heard of it before,” recalls the 41-year-old Parisian, who works as a communications director. “When I realised what it was – a heavy metal that’s harmful to our health and found in lots of the foods we eat every day – I felt an immediate wave of anxiety.”
She said that literally overnight, all the packets of pasta, biscuits and rice that were in her kitchen cupboards – and that she had barely paid any attention to until then – had become “potentially harmful” to her, her husband and their three children.
“I’d heard about pesticides, endocrine disruptors and so on, but I didn’t really pay much attention to them. Cadmium was a real eye-opener,” she says. “I began to take a serious interest in food contamination and realised the scale of the risk and how important it is to choose our food carefully for the sake of our health.”
Read more‘Public health time bomb’: How France allowed cadmium to poison its crops and soil
In recent years, there has been a spate of food controversies: mercury in tuna, cadmium in pasta, potatoes and chocolate, hexane in certain oils, pervasive organic pollutants (PFAS) in seafood, pesticides in fruit and vegetables. These are all things Laura now tries to be mindful of.
Christine, a single mother and childcare worker from Savoie, started paying closer attention to what was on her plate when her first daughter was born six years ago. “I wanted to make sure I was giving her the best, both during breastfeeding and afterwards,” she says. “I tried to avoid ultra-processed foods and opted for organic products where possible, to avoid pesticides.”
Like Laura, she was shocked by the revelations about cadmium. “All this time, I’d never paid any attention to pasta, rice or bread. I had no idea.”
Radical dietary changes
Keen to rid their diets of as many contaminants as possible, Laura and Christine set themselves the same mission: to be extra vigilant about what they and their families eat. But having to shake up their eating habits has caused huge headaches when it comes to day-to-day grocery shopping.
As a first step, the women banned the most harmful foods from their shopping lists, even if it meant fewer foods actually made it onto their shopping lists compared to their “banned” lists.
At Christine’s house, salmon is off the menu due to mercury contamination, as is chocolate from Africa and pasta made in France because of cadmium. Instead, they opt for lentils and other pulses, fruit and vegetables bought from local producers, and meat that is, where possible, locally sourced.
Read moreFrench population overexposed to cadmium through food, health agency says
Secondly, they have tried to prioritise products they consider healthier. When shopping, the women follow the same well-rehearsed routine. Smartphone in hand, they wander the aisles and compulsively scan every label using the Yuka app, which rates food and beauty products based on nutritional quality, additives and whether ingredients are organic. Products from different brands are meticulously compared; the “least worst” option is almost always chosen, and anything classified as red or orange – which is considered “harmful” – is immediately placed back on the shelf.
“And whenever possible, I make things from scratch,” says Laura. “Because that’s the best way to be sure of what we’re eating.”
The third step in their strategy has involved balancing all this against another important factor – price. Although Laura admits she’s fairly well-off, “with five mouths to feed, every penny counts”. She estimates that her food budget has increased by around €350 a month since she decided to change her habits.
“In the end, I find myself buying some food from organic shops, some from the supermarket, and certain fruit and vegetables from the greengrocer,” Laura says. “I base everything on the best value for money. It takes ages.”
She acknowledges that, despite her best efforts, the increase in household expenditure is having an impact on daily life.
“We’ve had to cut back on holidays. We’ll be going away for a shorter time this summer. And we’ve cancelled our annual weekend away over the May bank holidays.”
For lower income households with even tighter budgets, eating better sometimes means compromising on both quality and quantity. “I live alone with my two daughters. And eating well is expensive. So, unfortunately, sometimes I have to settle for ‘lower-quality food’ because I can’t afford the best,” Christine says. “But I try as much as possible to prioritise quality over quantity, even if it means I don’t get to eat enough.”
‘The agri-food industry is distancing us from what we eat’
Eating without risk of exposure to harmful chemicals has become a top priority for many consumers. According to the study “La France à table”, published in June 2025 by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, 40 percent of French people believe that the quality of food products has deteriorated over the past five years while 22 percent feel it has deteriorated substantially.
By no means a new trend, the results nevertheless reflect declining consumer confidence in food, says Sophie Thiron, a food sociologist and senior lecturer at Jean-Jaurès University in Toulouse.
“It is rooted in a long history of food controversies from the past. As early as 1905, the media was blowing the whistle on the dairy industry, which was selling adulterated milk as pure milk. In more recent times, there was mad cow disease in 1996 and the horse meat scandal of 2013,” Thiron notes.
Watch France overexposed to heavy metal cadmium due to food
“The revelations about cadmium, like those about pesticides before them, simply add to an already fertile ground of consumer concerns about what ends up on our plates,” she says. “And, in this case, it’s been further amplified by the widespread media coverage and health warnings from the scientific community.”
But Thiron believes that, at its root, all this wariness stems from the same problem: “The agri-food industry is distancing us from what we eat. We have less and less information about the origins or ingredients in our food. This gives the impression that we are not in control.”
Today, she acknowledges, there are several other factors exacerbating the situation. “Beyond the health aspect, more and more people are also thinking about their diet in terms of its impact on the environment or animal welfare.”
Added to this, she says, is the growing difficulty of “making sense of it all”.
“People are bombarded with messages – particularly from influencers – about what they should and shouldn’t eat, with information that is sometimes completely contradictory. It’s becoming very difficult to sort through it all, and everyone is overwhelmed.”
Anxiety and mental strain
For Laura and Christine, the constant need to weigh up every purchase has also become a source of anxiety.
“But all this anxiety is mainly linked to my daughters,” Christine explains. “Sometimes it keeps me awake at night. I feel as though I’m constantly thinking about it. I’m afraid of exposing them [to these contaminants] without even realising it,” she says.
“Especially as we know that no matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to protect ourselves completely. There are too many sources of contamination. There’s a saying, ‘We live to eat’. But I feel as though, whatever we do, we ‘eat to die’.”
WatchToxic beginnings: Babies exposed to pesticides in the womb
“And beyond the logistics, constantly having to think about the best option when you want to eat something takes so much mental energy. It’s exhausting,” Laura says.
Although concerns about food safety cut across all demographics, women – particularly young mothers like Christine and Laura – appear to be especially affected. “Unfortunately, this reflects a broader societal issue: the responsibility for their children’s health – and often that of their partners – still falls disproportionately on women,” Thiron says.
This was highlighted when FRANCE 24 invited readers to share their experiences for this article and received responses exclusively from women.
“Contrary to popular belief, this anxiety affects the middle class just as much as the working class,” Thiron adds. “It simply manifests itself differently. Middle-class households are more likely to respond by changing their purchasing habits in every way they can. Lower-income households, meanwhile, are often more inclined to distance themselves from the issue because they know they have fewer options.”
Grassroots campaign
Over time, however, the anxiety and frustration both women felt gave rise to a shared determination to push for political change.
“What we can do as individuals quickly reaches its limits. We need [collective] action so that politicians finally take this issue seriously and make it a priority,” Christine says.
Laura admits that, until relatively recently, she “wasn’t the slightest bit eco-conscious”. She now describes herself as having made a “complete U-turn”.
“I realised this was the root of the problem. Now I regularly hand out leaflets with environmental groups to raise awareness about pesticides and cadmium in particular,” she says.
WatchNew French bill aims to teach children how to eat better
Their campaigning has already gained political traction. On June 3, following months of public pressure, France’s National Assembly overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at reducing the population’s exposure to cadmium. The legislation, however, was adopted against the government’s advice and must still be approved by the Senate before becoming law.
Looking ahead, both women say policies to reduce exposure to food contaminants will be a key factor in how they vote in France’s upcoming presidential election. Laura says that, if little changes, she has even considered leaving the country.
“To the Nordic countries? Elsewhere? In any case, somewhere where there’s a clear political commitment to tackling these contaminants and [where the government] is more proactive. My children’s health is at stake.”
* Names have been changed
This article is an adaptation from the original in French by Nicole Trian.
This story originally appeared on France24
