Also not an activity that I admire. It's just wasteful and I can't condone it, no matter what country or the foodstuffs involved. If you have the kind of money that it takes to buy a boatload of any sort of foodstuff, good lord, GIVE it to someone who needs it instead of putting on your shorts and rolling in it for the yucks. It just doesn't sit well with me. The world has far too many examples of suffering for some of the most fortunate among us to skip amongst the tulips and do what they will with the banner held high of 'it's my money'. Good timing with Bastille Day and all yesterday ... this topic.
Yea, I noticed the link mentioned France24, which I watch all the time (although the immediate source was AFP). I regard the French, whom I know something about, and the Japanese, whom I am very interested in but know very little about, to be the two tribes on this earth that have been most obsessed with style and its cousin, art, the Japanese being the clear champions.
The Japanese are so elegant and refined and yet, at the same time, the dark side of their culture is so very dark. The lesson that I take from it all is that human beings need to maintain a connection to nature, to food production, to child rearing, to sweaty work and things of this nature.
When they become too detached from those things and obsessed with extravagances of style and art, they lose their minds. Next thing you know, they are jumping into bowls of (simulated?) ramen noodles or exploring even sillier -- sicker/cruel/perverse -- realms of "aesthetic" experience.