Day 2031 (Friday) 30th December 2022.

It was quite sunny this morning and Huw had to go to the big apartment to check out a lady. 

We have two stories today and I was really shocked by the first one…read on… 

Why do the French set fire to cars on New Year’s Eve?

Burning cars is something of a tradition in France on New Year's Eve, albeit a much-hated one by authorities and car owners.

Published: 31 December 2019 09:00 CET
Updated: 30 December 2022 09:22 CET

Cars in Strasbourg after New Year's Eve. Photo: AFP

Every New Year’s Eve nervous car owners across France cross their fingers in the hope they can start the year ahead with their vehicle intact. That’s because of a longstanding French ‘tradition’ that sees youths in certain areas torching scores of cars.

How many?

The car-burning seems to have begun in Strasbourg in the late 1990s and reached a peak in 2013, when 1,193 cars were set alight across the country on New Year’s Eve.

After that the numbers saw a slight but steady fall, although alterations in the data reporting makes it harder to compare 2019 and 2020.

The pandemic and accompanying restrictions meant that New Year’s Eve has been a muted event for the past two years. It remains to be seen whether 2022 will see a resurgence. 

The main reason for the fall, according to France’s national crime agency ONDRP, is that the media take less interest now in the mass burning of cars, which means there may be less of a thrill for the arsonists.

Authorities have previously refrained from reporting on the number of torched cars on New Year’s Eve after it was discovered that a district-by-district breakdown was fuelling destructive competition between rival gangs.

Added to that is that extra police are regularly deployed in sensitive areas on specific nights of the year to try to prevent the blazes.

Where?

This is not something that affects the whole of France, it is markedly more common in certain areas.

It reportedly began in the east of the country, in and around the poorer neighbourhoods of Strasbourg.

The more recent ONDRP data shows that the départements most affected by the phenomenon were Haute-Corse in Corsica, Isère to the south east which includes Grenoble, and Oise in the north east of the country.

Rural areas of France are much less affected than urban areas.

The car owners most affected are generally in the more hard-up neighbourhoods.

So why do the French burn cars anyway?

This isn’t only something that happens on New Year’s Eve – cars are often set ablaze whenever there is an outbreak of social disorder, as seen in the 2005 riots when hundreds of vehicles were torched.

The ONDRP’s Christophe Schulz told Le Parisien newspaper: “Vehicle fires are often associated with a context of riots and urban violence. It can also be a ‘game’ to break the monotony, or it could be motivated by vengeance after a violent arrest. Or it could just be to get rid of a car used in a crime or as an insurance scam.”

In previous years, cars have also been torched on Bastille Day, as well as during periods of social unrest such as the gilets jaunes protests of 2018/19. 

Here’s the second story…

Digestif: Do France’s after-dinner drinks actually help digestion?

Drinks like cognac, calvados and armagnac are popular in France and thought to aid digestion after a big meal - but does any actual science back this up?

Cognac is among the digestifs popular in France. But its health benefits are pretty much non-existent. (Photo by GEORGES GOBET / AFP)

Alcoholic beverages thought to help with digestion have existed since the middle ages – or perhaps even earlier. 

Monks and alchemists in Europe used herbs and spices to make drinks like Hippocras which were thought not only to have medicinal properties but also to be aphrodisiacs. King Louis XIV of France was known to be a fan. 

Digestifs remain highly popular in France today. A tipple of calvados, cognac or armagnac after a hearty meal is seen as a luxurious way to help the digestive system. 

At the other end are apéritifs (apéro) such as kir, white wine or pastis that are thought to sharpen the appetite before a meal.

But the science suggests that digestifs do little to aid digestion. 

A 2010 scientific paper titled, ‘Effect on gastric function and symptoms of drinking wine, black tea, or schnapps with a Swiss cheese fondue’, found that consuming alcohol after a meal actually slows down the digestive system by up to 50 percent. 

The reason for this is that alcohol blocks the secretion of gastrin – a hormone that stimulates the release of gastric acid, which is a key component of the digestive process. The stronger the alcohol, the greater this blocking effect is. 

Alcohol is also highly calorific. In consuming it, drinkers are adding to the overall amount of calories that the body has to digest.  

The only physiological benefit of drinking a digestif after a meal is that alcohol is a vasodilator, meaning it opens up blood vessels and prevents muscles from tightening. This allows the stomach to expand and can bring a short-term feeling of relief if you have eaten too much food. 

Whatever the science says, French people seem unlikely to stop drinking digestifs anytime soon. 

“Digestifs maybe don’t have the digestive qualities that we attribute to them but the ritual means that they have a place. They allow us to stretch an evening on and have conversations, to relax, to chat, to laugh and to take our time,” writes sommelier Véronique Rivest.