Reforming the national school system is a habit for every French government. For once this year, the process might have interested the fresh produce industry, because a high-profile MP proposed that the authority reconsider its decision to ban vending machines in schools.

Remember, only last year, the French parliament decided to exclude all these machines that for the most part offered unhealthy manufactured food and high sugared fizzy drinks. In a time when obesity began to raise the country’s heckles, vending machines were high on the list of the scapegoats selected by politicians. The fresh produce industry raised its concerns about the prohibition, as some colleges had seen successful trials with fruit vending machines. But the politicians lent a deaf ear and the trendy bill was passed.

Fast forward to this winter, and the French prime minister tried to pass a highly dangerous (for him if not the students) bill reforming the structure of teaching, examinations and management within French schools. Not surprisingly, an MP seized his opportunity to bring the reintroduction of vending machines back into the equation.

This time chocolate bars and fizzy drinks would be forbidden. The MP told the chamber that vending machines had played a significant role in increasing the obesity problem in France and the strategic placement of machines selling healthy foods - such as fruit and vegetables is the answer. After all that trouble to get them outlawed in the first place.

Alas, a procedural trick prevented the amendment coming to a vote. Now the bill will pass to the upper chamber, the Senate, and there is nobody in France who is willing to second-guess the likely views of a Senator on the issue.

What do catering professionals think of all of this? Or the nutritionist doctors? Or for that matter the under-fire vending machine operators? In fact isn’t it high time that this issue was made the subject of a real debate instead of it being used as a political tool in the Chamber?