"The little taste is pleasant": the French are increasingly falling for salted butter
Unsalted butter or salted butter for toast in the morning, in some regions like Brittany , this can be a casus belli. And according to the Circana institute, more and more French people are opting for the second option: in 2024, more than a third of butter bought in stores was salted . A first in the country.
According to Circana, semi-salted butter has accounted for 33.6% of sales by volume since the beginning of 2025. This is +0.5% compared to 2024 and has been steadily increasing since at least 2020.
Even in Lyon, consumers are gradually getting into it, like Pauline: "I have a little crush on the little salty taste behind it, which is more pleasant." Since opening his cheese shop five years ago, Nicolas Bugnon has seen customer preferences evolve. He has even stopped selling unsalted butter: "Demand has shifted towards salted butter," he confirmed to RMC .
The same goes for Olivier, originally from Berry and living in Mayenne but converted to salted butter after living in Brittany for a while: "I even eat charcuterie with salted butter now," he assures us.
Others are resisting. This is the case for Alain, for whom "unsalted butter" is a principle of life. A regional chauvinism asserted by this retiree: "We're not in Brittany, I don't like salted butter," claims the Lyonnais.
Because the trend is not necessarily good news for our health , according to Jade Fontaine, dietician-nutritionist: "Salt consumption has already increased significantly in our diet. We must therefore be careful if we have hypertension or cardiovascular disease, even if it means using just full-fat butter without salt."
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, each French person eats an average of 8 kilos of butter per year. With regional disparities; unsurprisingly, in Brittany and Normandy, more than 6 out of 10 butter bars sold are salted (63.5%). But this is far from being the case in the east of the country, for example, where only about one in 10 bars is salted (11.9%).
RMC
