I have heard this from several people (probably about four or five), but they are all French. Is it a matter of Americans liking cinnamon or French NOT liking cinnamon?

Maybe someone here actually can talk definitively about the subject of the development of American and French cuisine but I'll struggle along mainly just on a little bit of culinary knowledge.

So first I looked at Cinnamon imports, I am using Cassia+ True Cinnamon as one because I don't think there has been much focus on the difference lately until the scare with coumarin levels. American consumption has roughly doubled per capita from the late 1960s to 2005 ( Roughly 9-13 million pounds @ 200 million population versus 42 pounds @ 300). But, world production increased at a far faster rate. (Cinnamon consumption levels from USDA data, World Production levels from Cinnamon and Cassia: The Genus Cinnamomum by P. N. Ravindran, K Nirmal-Babu, M Shylaja)

The opposite question in my mind is why does France use less cinnamon? The Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and Portugal all come to mind as countries in Europe that use probably more cinnamon than France. One issue in my quick research is that Europe imports a lot of cinnamon to reexport it, so it might be harder to peg consumption rates. The Dutch and the English traded heavily in cinnamon, and it became part of many European dishes, and probably the Dutch and English contact with America helped get America hooked. Apple Pie, though commonly referred to as American, is probably mostly a Dutch dish if you have cinnamon in the recipe. Cinnamon rolls were made in Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Maybe a relevant question is if France's later entrance into Southeast Asia made them adopt cinnamon to a lesser extent than did other European nations. While France has colonies in the mid 19th century in SE Asia, they never controlled the spice trade as Portugal, England, or the Netherlands had.