Has the doner kebab become a political issue in Europe? While the idea may appear funny, that is a serious question. Alongside the hamburger, the doner kebab is one of France’s most popular fast-food dishes. It has also attracted incredible attention and controversy, raising formerly unexplored cultural issues.
In December 2017, the European Parliament’s health committee voted to prohibit phosphate additives used in frozen kebab meat. This became an imagined simple administrative adjustment for public fitness motives, but the choice sparked an outcry, and the issue became a game of unlikely political soccer.
Does the doner kebab need to be ‘saved?
German European deputy Renate Sommer (CDU) took the first shot, declaring on her Facebook page that the selection would penalize proprietors of small eating places and likely result in the loss of many jobs.
The story grew and was soon covered by European media: Bild repeated Ms. Sommer’s issues, and The Guardian, La Repubblica, and El País quickly followed suit.
Due to the uproar, two weeks later, the European Parliament used an upcoming assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as an excuse to delay the selection.
While it would look like a storm in a teacup, the incident isn’t as minor as it would appear at the outset. The wave of reactions, starting from despair and outrage to leisure and delight, demonstrated that behind the doner kebab’s modest façade, it is, in fact, an image of the social, political, and identification problems going through European societies these days.
A love-hate courting with the doner kebab
The European tale of the doner kebab is, first and foremost, about the astounding success of a dish that, against all odds, has become both the laborer’s meal of desire and the fundamental nighttime snack.
The doner kebab arrived in Europe in the mid-Nineteen Thirties. At the same time, a handful of Greek and Armenian restaurant proprietors, exiled from Anatolia years in advance, decided to feature it on their menus. At that point, it was an unassuming dish regarded as being handiest to immigrants, who noticed it as a reasonably-priced meal that still allowed them to keep a symbolic link with their domestic countries.
Also referred to as the döner kebap, the dish, and others adore it spread across the world, wherein goes using names inclusive of the gyro (Greek), shawarma (Arabic), and al pastor (Spanish), with endless nearby variations.
It wasn’t till the 1980s and 1990s that the doner kebab, without a doubt, took off in Western Europe. As deindustrialization hit, many laid-off workers, especially the ones from Turkey at the beginning, were determined to try their hand at meal service.
With no giant culinary know-how and little capital, many of those new marketers grew to become the doner kebab. Their inexpensive eating places chiefly targeted people, college students, and immigrants looking for an unpretentious region to grab a meal day or night. The doner kebab proved abruptly popular and regularly carved out a place in European cities’ culinary and social landscapes.
Millions of doner kebabs every day
The doner kebab’s upward push in popularity has been excellent. In Paris alone, there are over 550 doner kebab shops. In the United Kingdom, they’re reportedly bought in 17,000 groups. And in Germany, the European heartland of the doner kebab, 2 million were eaten daily in 2017.
This success is even more promising given that it doesn’t rely on a monopoly by way of a globe-spanning food conglomerate; however, there is the (partially unconscious) “genius” of tens of thousands of martial food sellers. Not only do they serve a satisfying meal that meets clients’ cultural and moral standards—especially with halal meat—but additionally, they keep up with hastily converting European eating habits.
