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

So the French are not primarily concerned with policing their children’s food intake, or banning all “fake foods.” Rather, their goal is to train their children to eat a balanced diet and to realize how much healthier they feel if they eat mostly “real food.”

The results—in terms of vegetable and fruit consumption by French children—are impressive. Before I allowed myself to be truly convinced of the French approach, I actually looked up the statistics. The French recommendation is that kids eat five portions (about two and a half cups) of fruits and vegetables per day. Just under half (42 percent) of French children achieve this. And many of the rest were pretty close. In contrast, only about 10 percent of American children and adolescents (and 20 percent of toddlers) are estimated to consume the American government’s recommended daily two and a half cups per day of fruits and vegetables. The most popular “fruit” in North America is actually fruit juice (just under half of fruit intake in toddlers). And the most common type of “vegetable” consumed by American kids is the french fry (up to one-half of all vegetables consumed, in some studies), which doesn’t qualify as a vegetable in the French statistics.

I know what you’re thinking. I had the same question. How do French parents actually get their kids to eat all these fruits and vegetables?

A big part of the explanation lies in how early kids are introduced to a variety of foods, and with what intention. First of all, it’s important to understand that French parents aren’t solely focused on getting kids to eat their fruits and veggies. Rather, they’re interested in training their kids’ appetites. The French understand “appetite” as a psychological state, which primes you to eat (and be satisfied) by certain foods. So, for the French, an appetite is not just a measure of an empty stomach; it is also a state of mind. If eating is something that someone does, then appetite is what he or she feels like doing. This depends on many things: the time of day, your desire to eat, how you feel about the setting, and so on. The French deliberately train their kids’ appetite, emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically. And they do this very differently than North American parents do.

In North America, parents tend to start with a very few foods, and introduce them very slowly. Beyond that, little guidance is given. As the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) informs parents on their parenting website: “For most babies it does not matter what the first solid foods are.” Food Fights, a book written by doctors and published by the AAP (and promoted on its website), devotes an entire chapter to ketchup as kids’ condiment of choice. The book contains some views that would make French pediatricians wince (notably, using ketchup to encourage children to eat vegetables doesn’t have long-term implications for their future acceptance of new foods and flavors).

The French equivalent of the AAP is the Société Française de Pédiatrie. The longest section of their publication on infant and toddler nutrition is titled “food diversification.” It does not mention ketchup. Reading through this (and other texts published by French pediatricians) provides some fascinating insights into how French parents approach variety in babies’ diets. First of all, they are very precise about ages and stages for introducing new foods. Cookbooks (and baby food websites) will typically be divided into the following categories: 4 to 5 months, 6 to 9 months, 9 to 12 months, 12 to 18 months, and 18 to 36 months. Each phase has new types of foods, with the goal of children eating pretty much everything adults do by the age of three.

The French also differ in terms of what they feed their children. At four months, the first food for French babies is not necessarily cereal (as is usual in North America), but rather a thin vegetable puree or soup. Standard advice from pediatricians is to dilute this with milk, and serve it in a baby bottle. On Day 1, a dollop of soup (say, leek soup) in their milk introduces them to the taste. On successive days, the amount of soup is increased (and the amount of milk is decreased). Within less than a week, baby is drinking vegetable soup rather than milk for the main meal of the day. The next step is to gradually thicken the soup, moving to a sippy cup, and then to a spoon. By the time babies are developmentally ready to learn to eat with a spoon, they’ve already learned to like their veggies.

Fruits are started shortly after vegetables and are usually given at the afternoon goûter. Anticipating that French parents will be eager to introduce as many tastes as possible, French pediatricians gently caution, “It is preferable to introduce only one fruit per day, in order to allow a child to learn to appreciate the specific taste of each fruit.”

By nine months, the options have expanded dramatically. By now, baby is eating a wider range of vegetables. For some, these still come as a brothlike soup in a baby bottle; others have graduated to being fed with a spoon (the preferred method for breast-fed babies). On the menu are carrots (but not too many, in case of constipation), green beans, spinach, zucchini, baby (white) leeks, baby endive, baby chard, and squash. Again, parents are encouraged to give only one vegetable per meal, to foster the baby’s budding taste buds. Cereals are not offered, except for a tablespoon or two stirred into the baby’s milk for the morning and the evening bottle-feeding. (I don’t agree with everything in the French model: despite all of the research demonstrating the advantages of breast-feeding, France has some of the lowest breast-feeding rates in the industrialized world. And if French mothers do breast-feed, they typically stop at two months.)

A second, more advanced phase of diversification starts at one year, and lasts until about three—the crucial period in which the French shape (some books even