Cheese sales soar in French lockdown – but an Italian is biggest winner

Consumption at home rose sharply last year, with mozzarella up 21% and raclette machines in high demand

How did the French keep smiling through the Covid lockdown? Not by saying cheese" but by eating it, figures suggest.

Researchers say cheese consumption at home soared last year as the confined sought comfort food. And in a nation that boasts 246 kinds of cheese, as the former president Charles de Gaulle once said, it was Italian mozzarella that benefited most, with a 21.2% rise in sales in 2020.