Sophie’s face told me everything as she left the classroom. She bolted into my arms, wailing. When she calmed down, I heard the story. She had eaten nothing all day. Lunch was inedible (according to her). Unlike her day care, there was no morning or afternoon snack. And no one had allowed her to get a drink of water, even when she raised her hand.
Fuming, I put her to bed early and decided to show up at school early the next day with a packed lunch, water bottle, and some strong words for the teacher. I planned my comments carefully: “Sophie is having enough trouble adjusting to a new culture. At home, children can drink when they want to, even during class. Could she please bring her lunch from home until she settles in?”
Leaving Philippe to get Sophie ready for school, I rushed over half an hour early in order to get a chance to speak with Madame. But Madame was not impressed. Eyeing Sophie’s lunch bag with suspicion, she sniffed, “I have to think of the entire class. We can’t have special treats being sent from home, or special allowances made for anyone.” Before I could stop myself, I blurted out my concerns. Would Sophie be stigmatized because she ate differently than the other children? Or wasn’t as adventurous an eater? What would that do to her socially? And how would she ever learn anything if she was hungry and thirsty all the time? Seeing my worried face, Madame softened. “Come to see the cantine on your way out,” she invited.
Our first stop was the kitchen, where the chef was already at work. Wielding a ladle taller than me, he stood on his tiptoes stirring onions in a pot that looked big enough to hold Sophie’s entire class. Meals were made from scratch, he said proudly, pointing to the vegetables lined up on the chopping block. He tried to buy local ingredients whenever he could. And, he added, the government was planning to require 20 percent of the ingredients to be organic by 2012. Good food was not, he added, about spending lots of money; it could be simple, inexpensive, and tasty. I tried to look suitably impressed.
Not all cantines are lucky enough to have their own chef, I later found out. To cut costs, many have resorted to outside catering companies and started using prepackaged, preprepared ingredients where possible. In fact, one study released shortly after my visit suggested that up to half of France’s cantines were not in compliance with the Ministry of Education’s strict regulations. French parents were up in arms. One well-known chef, Cyril Lignac, even launched a reality TV show (Vive la Cantine!) where he played the role of “food savior” to kids in schools across France (much like Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution). Still, even the worst cantine meals in France were probably better than the average meals available at most North American cafeterias.
To understand the crucial role played by the school chef, it’s important to know that the French think that lunch should be the biggest and most important meal of the day—representing about 40 percent of children’s total caloric intake. Since vending machines are banned in all French schools, there is no place to get food except the cantine. A majority of students eat at school, and they are not allowed to bring their own lunches (unless they have serious allergies). So the cantine is the place where the majority of France’s six million schoolchildren eat lunch every day. At Sophie’s school, the chef was the undisputed master of the cantine, regularly walking around at mealtimes to ask the children what they thought of his dishes (and sometimes waving the ladle in the direction of unwilling eaters, Sophie later told me). Even without knowing all of this, it was clear that the chef took great pride in his work.
We thanked him and then moved on to the dining area. Proudly pointing out the cloth napkins and tablecloths (a significant expense for a small village school), Madame explained that the children were served the food by special staff who oversaw the meal (correcting kids’ manners, sometimes not so gently) while the teachers had their lunch in a separate room. China plates and kid-size cutlery were waiting on the tables, lined up with the precision of a miniature military officers’ mess. In spite of myself, I was impressed. This, she assured me, was standard for French schools.
Order was important, Madame noted, because (by government decree) the children spent a minimum of thirty minutes at the table. I thought of the older kids I knew back home, allotted ten minutes to gobble down a cold sandwich at their desks, but I said nothing. How could Madame possibly understand?
In French schools, continued Madame, mealtime is meant to allow students to socialize, to take pleasure in new foods and to discover them in a relaxed environment. Eating the same thing is also an important factor in diversifying children’s diets. At school, under the influence of peers, children taste and eat things that would have them turning up their noses at home (peer-induced behavioral change is also confirmed by American research). The French system is actually a highly perfected peer-pressure-driven food diversification program. With a few
