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

Parents don’t believe that children can learn to eat new things. They want convenience, and they’re worried about their children going hungry: they are focused on how much they eat, rather than what they eat. Plus, families have such conflicting food preferences that there is no way to provide satisfying, nutritionally sensible menus for everyone.

The concept underlying a hot lunch program—the idea that someone other than the parents would control eating and organize the feeding of new foods to their children—seemed to push many parents out of their comfort zones. Preserving individual choice (even if the choice was to eat poor-quality foods with limited variety) seemed, for most parents, to be more important than teaching children to learn to love new foods. I was reminded of the conversation I’d had months before with Philippe’s friends. How can I convince people here that a French approach might work? I wondered. In France, I saw the evidence with my own eyes. But here, people have such a hard time believing that there is another way.

After weeks of thinking about it, I still didn’t have an answer. But given that I had put in nearly a month of work, I decided to bring my results to the day-care management anyway. I asked if I could brief the person overseeing the entire day-care network, was given an appointment, and two weeks later dutifully showed up clutching copies of the thirty-two-page report I had prepared, which analyzed the survey results in detail.

Along with a couple of co-workers, the day-care manager and her boss heard me out patiently. I explained that a majority of parents were supportive of a hot lunch program, and I outlined the benefits: less work for parents and better nutrition and food habits for children. Despite the large number of foods on the “do not serve” list that parents had provided, I had managed to come up with a sample set of menus that would, I thought, please everyone, drawing on some of Sophie’s school menus in France. A little shyly, I shared some sample dishes (while wryly acknowledging that a year ago I hadn’t believed that my children would eat many of these dishes): lentil-apricot soup, apple compote, avocado salad, and green pea risotto.

Silence filled the room as everyone looked through the list. Finally, one staff member put his head up, looked me in the eye, and matter-of-factly said:

“Kids only eat pasta and fishy crackers anyway. Why would you want to cook them all this stuff? It would only get thrown out!”

“But I know that most kids can eat lots of different foods. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, in France,” I said, stung. “At our day care, one of the staff prepared hot meals for the children every day, and they all learned to eat lots of things—like beets!” I added, a bit weakly. I hadn’t planned for this kind of challenge; taken by surprise, I couldn’t think of very good arguments.

“Um, and the French have food rules for their children. They really work!” I continued, a little more enthusiastically. “Most French kids eat everything, and like it!”

But before I could continue, someone cut in.

“Our staff has advanced training in early childhood education. They are professionals. Cooking is not part of their job description, nor should it be. They are educators, not cooks.”

“But isn’t teaching children how to eat healthily, a variety of things, a balanced diet, isn’t that part of educating them?” I feebly offered. Judging by the looks on their faces, I hadn’t convinced anyone.

“It’s not in their job description, and it shouldn’t be,” I was told, politely but firmly.

“Um, we just came back from a year in France, and the day-care workers and teachers there believe that it is part of their job description. It’s even in the school curriculum,” I offered hesitantly. I didn’t want to offend anyone, but I really did hope that they might be inspired by the French example.

“That wouldn’t work here,” was the response. “We’re too different.”

After that, I didn’t have much else to say. The meeting ended quickly, and I left the building in a slight state of disbelief. Even though 75 percent of parents—nearly one hundred families—had supported the idea of a hot lunch, my suggestion had been flatly turned down. I felt a little silly. I was an accidental food activist, and a failed one at that. Who did I think I was, trying to change the world?

Still, I was convinced of the value of the lessons we had learned in France. I had seen with my own eyes that the French approach worked. We couldn’t go back to the way we were before. We’d have to figure out how to instill a genuine food culture in our children, even in North America. And parents’ beliefs about what foods children could like (hopefully not just pasta and fishy crackers) were the starting point. In thinking about this, I realized there was another rule that I had picked up in France without even being aware of it.

French Food Rule #9:

Eat mostly real, homemade food, and save treats for special occasions.

(Hint: Anything processed is not “real” food.)

This rule, I decided, was key to feeding children well in North America. First, parents had to serve (and eat) real food rather than processed food. Second, they could allow treats but make sure that “real food” was the majority of what their children were consuming. Now, this rule is not an explicit French Food Rule, because so much of what French people eat is, by default, “real food.” But, I realized, we needed to have something like this in Vancouver in order to maintain the healthy relationship with food that we had established. And this rule summed up a key aspect of the French approach: that the quality of what kids eat is key to healthy eating. This was a corrective to the bias toward processed foods in North American food culture.

Part of this healthy relationship with food arises in France because