French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Billon (classic english novels txt) 📕

our shoulders, just as we’d seen with the French toddler in the restaurant (it seemed like ages ago). And just like that toddler, Claire popped her thumb into her mouth and placidly allowed herself to be carried out of the house without making a sound.

On the drive home, I mused about how well the dinner had gone. Philippe was right, I admitted. French families encouraged their children to eat well, but they did this largely without direct conflict. Rather, parents created good routines early on, and the kids absorbed good eating habits by osmosis, by seeing and copying other kids and adults around them. I’d have to treat the rules more like habits, or like long-term goals. And I’d have to include other people in the kids’ French food education, starting with myself. I had been wrong to try to change my children’s eating habits without changing my own. I’d have to reform my own eating first. I’d have to make eating fun. Luckily, something I had recently read gave me the perfect idea for how to go about it.

6

The Kohlrabi Experiment

Learning to Love New Foods

En voilà un qui coupe la soupe

En voilà un qui la goûte

En voilà un qui la trempe

En voilà un qui la mange

Et voilà le petit glinglin

Qui arrive trop tard

Et ne trouve plus rien

Et qui fait couin couin!

This little one served the soup

This little one took a sip

This little one dipped in the cup

This little one ate it all up

And this little mate

Arrived too late

And found nothing to eat

And squeak squeak squeaked!

—This traditional French version of “This Little Piggy Went to Market” is counted by an adult on the fingers of a child’s hand.

My New Year’s resolution was simple. By March, the kids should be eating ten new foods—and loving them. Christmas dinner (and an equally lavish New Year’s dinner that had followed it) had inspired me to try again. But this time, I’d be more strategic. The kids would learn to eat new things, I told myself, even while learning how to make eating fun—for the whole family. I would (temporarily) give up on strict scheduling and on eating slowly. And I would relax my strict snacking regimen. For the moment we’d simply focus on developing the kids’ ability to eat, and enjoy, a variety of foods; we’d move on to the other food rules after that.

My resolve was strengthened by some scientific research that I had stumbled across in my late-night Internet searches. A decade ago, two American researchers designed a novel experiment. It was based on decades of research showing that children’s food tastes and habits begin forming in early childhood. The experiment was simple, but ingenious. Nine day-care programs were chosen to participate, involving nearly 120 children between the ages of three and five. The scientists divided them into three groups: A, B, and C.

On the first day of the experiment, children in all three groups were served vegetables as a snack, and their eating choices were recorded. One of the choices was a vegetable deliberately chosen to be unfamiliar: kohlrabi, served whole and sliced. After the snack, each child was interviewed, but not a single one could identify the target vegetable. (If you don’t know what kohlrabi is, don’t worry: I didn’t either. A main constituent of the national dish of Kashmir, it’s a member of the cabbage family that looks like a hairy turnip on steroids. But its sweet, mild taste belies its Frankenstein appearance: the hearts of young kohlrabi plants can be as juicy and crunchy as an apple.)

On the second day, a university student came in to read a picture book to each group just before snack time. Group A heard a story about a young boy going through his grandfather’s garden and discovering that he liked vegetables, with the exception of kohlrabi. The book was modified so that the boy’s refrain—“at least I didn’t have to eat kohlrabi”—was mentioned on every page. Group B heard the same story, but with a positive refrain: “almost as good as kohlrabi.” Group C was read a book of similar length, but with no reference to food.

After the story, the children were again interviewed. Two-thirds of the children in Group B (the “positive message” group) could identify the kohlrabi correctly. All of the children were again invited to taste the kohlrabi. The only children who refused to do so were in Group A (the “negative message” group). And more than two-thirds of the children who tasted the kohlrabi said that they liked it.

This is admittedly a quirky experiment. But it demonstrates an important fact: kids’ food tastes are more adaptable than many of us would believe. Even more important, this experiment shows how simple it is to cultivate kids’ love of food. If adults joyfully and mindfully incorporate positive messages about food—all food—into everyday life, then kids will learn to eat all sorts of things. And peer pressure works: if other kids and adults eat these things, even the most unwilling kids will probably do so too.

France, I realized, was a country where the kohlrabi experiment has been running for hundreds of years. By the time they are three years old, the only things that most French children have yet to taste are alcohol and offal (organ meats), a French delicacy that most will soon learn to love. Of course, the French are not unusual. Back home in Vancouver, we saw this all around us. The kids in the Indian family across the street loved dahl (lentil soup) and spices like turmeric. Sophie’s Mexican friend loved hot sauce. Claire’s Polish friend brought sauerkraut in her lunch. Kids’ food preferences are, in other words, more malleable than most American parents would believe.

Of course, French kids—like kids anywhere—sometimes tend to be uncomfortable trying new foods. From chatting with Philippe’s cousin Christelle—who now ran a day-care program in the French city