Western Europe has a problem. France has it worst. Germanic countries are fighting a rearguard action and only Denmark is mounting anything like a successful defence. I’m talking about fresh milk.

France produces plenty of milk. How else could they make their magnificent cheeses? Driving around Normandy the other week revealed the most fertile land for raising dairy cattle you’ll find. Cheese is produced from growth of bacteria in milk. They are even content to use raw milk to make classics like Roquefort.

But order a café au lait or cappuccino anywhere in the country and you’ll be served up a burnt-tasting robusta brew mixed with milk that’s been boiled for a few seconds at 103 degrees and packaged in a waxy plastic-coated box. It’s revolting. It seems that cafés serving hundreds of litres of milk per day ‘need’ milk with a six-month shelf life.

Morning coffee is supposed to make you happy and ready to start your day, preferably with a smile, not the twisted grimace that follows French coffee because the only alternative on offer is a No-Doz tablet.

Why do they not only put up with this, but seem to embrace it completely? 95.5 per cent of the consumer milk market in France is Ultra High Temperature (UHT) treated milk. That stuff we keep a couple of boxes of in the pantry in case of black-out is pretty much all they drink. In two weeks driving around France, none of the smaller supermarkets even had fresh milk to buy. One service station shop did.

It’s a marketing miracle that Parmalat – UHT milk’s leading producer – managed to get Europeans to accept it. But it’s a bit more sinister than that. And it goes a lot further than the markets for coffee and milk. I get the impression that the French ‘accepted’ it in the way anyone accepts a new tax. Food supply is controlled by one large company named Metro (not the subway system). They supply food to supermarkets and directly to restaurants. Presently around two-thirds of food is supplied through such big grocers and buying groups. Changes to planning laws in France have enabled the growth of small supermarkets, predominantly supplied by ‘Big Food’, as consumers eschew the trek out to the large hypermarket, a tendency worsened during pandemic lockdowns. That reluctance to shop at hypermarkets used to benefit small local shops; now consumers visit the little supermarkets. The market dominance of Big Food is emerging as a threat to France’s culture of independent producers – the boulangeries, charcuteries, and patisseries you can find nestled in the smallest villages. Some are fighting back, promising cuisine that is fresh and ‘pas de Metro’, but over half of French restaurants recently admitted to serving heated-up frozen products.

For a glimpse of the culinary future in store for France, go to any random pub or restaurant across the channel and chances are it will be a chain pub, especially in Edinburgh. They can be sort of nice – a pleasant manager or waiter can make all the difference – until you go to another and the menu is identical.

It’s a wonder UHT has been resisted until now in the Anglophone world. Not undeterred, opinion pieces have been springing up in publications like The New Republic claiming that UHT is better for the planet because you don’t need a fridge for it, as if we live in the third-world. Given the way Europeans overheat their restaurants, hotels, and shops, they’re hardly in any position to lecture anyone else on ‘think global, act local’ energy stewardship. Perhaps because of this, but also in a snobbish desire to appear more cosmopolitan, UHT is apparently catching on in Manhattan Island.

So, climate alarmists are not only coming for your car; now they want to make you pretend to enjoy garbage coffee to save the planet, as yet another quasi-religious act of self-mortification to delay the apocalypse. Given that the loudest ascetics and clergy of such circles also tend to be well-off inner-city types who currently enjoy the best coffee available, there might be a slight upside of schadenfreude in watching them pour that bilge down their virtuous gobs, while Big Food laughs all the way to the bank – and your local MP’s parliamentary lobby.