The Tour de France is an epic marathon of eating.

The Epic 2,200-Mile Tour De France Is Also A Test Of Epic Eating : The Salt : NPR:

The cyclists now competing in the 101st rendition of the race are burning an average of 700 calories per hour while riding and, to keep their weight up and maintain their health through the three-week event, they must eat 6,000 to 9,000 calories every day.
... The almost nonstop eating begins with juice as soon as the athletes wake, according to Nigel Mitchell, head of nutrition forTeam Sky. After joining their teammates in the hotel dining room, they devour a massive buffet-style breakfast, heavy on carbs and sugar, and moderate in fiber, which can add unwanted bulk to the cyclists' bellies.
When they've finished this matinal meal, they pile into a bus, and keep eating, taking in hundreds more calories in energy drinks and bars before arriving at the starting line. Once they begin pedaling, team support vehicles shadow the riders, and assistants hand them energy gel packets, homemade rice cakes and Panini sandwiches.

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A sign of the decline in French cuisine

BBC News - The new sign on French menus:

"The summer rush to France - a magnet for more foreign tourists than any other country - is about to begin. And this year travellers may spot a new logo on menus, designed to flag up when food has been home-made. But how exactly is "home-made" defined?
 The bad news is that - just like anywhere else in the developed world - many French restaurants just reheat pre-prepared food, rather than cooking it from scratch.

French consumers estimated, in a poll last October, that barely half of restaurant meals were home-made, while the Union of Hotel Skills and Industries suggests that 85% of restaurants secretly make use of frozen or vacuum-packed food.
In the country of Parmentier, Escoffier, and Paul Bocuse, to many people this just doesn't seem right, so a law designed to uphold French culinary traditions was passed earlier this year, and came into force this week.

Now any restaurant that serves a home-made dish can indicate it on the menu with it new logo - in the shape of a saucepan with a roof-like lid.
From next January it will be compulsory for all menus to carry the logo - so if you don't see it, the food is not fait maison.

"We chose to represent 'home-made' with a logo so that foreign tourists could understand it," says a government spokeswoman.

"French gastronomy represents 13.5% of foreign tourists' expenses and it's undeniable that if we add value to the quality of our restaurants, it will have an impact on tourism.""

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