Now, French kids don’t eat this way because of some genetic predisposition for liking exotic foods. Just like kids anywhere, their favorites include things like pasta, potato chips, chicken, and chocolate. But that’s not what they usually eat. As amazing as it may sound, French children love all kinds of food, and most of what they eat is healthy. True, you might find the rare French child who has an aversion to specific foods (cauliflower, in my husband’s case). But, for the most part, French kids consume anything put in front of them. They eat in a straightforward, joyous, and all-embracing way that seems baffling to the ordinary North American. And everyone assumes this is normal—including the kids.
This is, in fact, a junior version of the famous “French Paradox,” which has had scientists scratching their heads for years. In a nutshell: French adults spend twice as much time as Americans eating, and they consume foods like butter, pork, and cheese in apparently uninhibited quantities, yet are less overweight (and very rarely obese) and have lower rates of heart disease than Americans. Yes, this is one of those unfair facts of life: the French, it seems, can truly have their cake and eat it too.
The way French kids eat is equally paradoxical. French parents gently compel their children to eat healthy food. They expect their kids to eat everything they are served, uncomplainingly. They ask them to spend long hours at the table (where they are expected to be extremely well behaved) rather than watching TV or playing video games. Despite this, French kids think eating is fun. And that’s not all: France’s rate of child obesity is one of the lowest in the developed world. And while rates of overweight and obese children are at an all-time high and are rapidly increasing in most wealthy countries (with the United States leading the pack), they are stable and even declining in France. This is not because they’re all on a weight-loss program; diets for French children are relatively rare because few of them need it.
Before we moved to France, I was stumped about how French parents achieved this. I knew (and worried) about the negative effects of poor diet on my children’s health, teeth (cavities!), sleeping patterns, school performance, and even their IQ. But I felt powerless to do anything to change the way they ate. I wanted to change, but I didn’t know how.
The “strategies” used by parents we knew in Vancouver didn’t seem very satisfactory. Force and pressure tactics didn’t appeal to me (although I admit to trying them). And I didn’t like bribing kids to finish (or even start) their meals. Vitamin pills seemed like a cop-out, particularly after I read that they don’t supply nutrients the same way fresh food does. So I bought the cookbooks that suggested sneaking healthy foods into kids’ meals, and I tried concocting specialized menus that required the skill of a chemist and the savoir faire of a chef. As I wasn’t a particularly enthusiastic or efficient cook, I found this approach to be incredibly time consuming. And it didn’t really work; in fact, it backfired. Sophie’s sensitive “yucky food” detectors would be put on alert by the faintest whiff of anything odd, and she became even more suspicious of what was on her plate. And even if the “sneaky” method had worked, it made me wonder: Would my kids keep putting cauliflower puree in their brownies after they had left home? I didn’t think so.
Admittedly, my failed attempt to sneak healthy foods into my kids’ meals was, in part, a reflection on my limited cooking skills. Soon after we married, Philippe christened me La Reine des Casseroles Brûlées (the Queen of Burned Pots), given my unfortunate habit of going on the computer, or diving into a really good book, in the middle of making a meal. My cooking repertoire was limited to four or five dishes (at most) that would cycle over and over again, with potatoes featuring heavily throughout. This is the way I was raised. My mother came from a farming family; her mother had eight children to feed and little time for fancy extras. Every night, she would prepare one dish and serve it without ceremony. “We ate,” remembers my uncle John, “because we were hungry. And no one ever encouraged us to eat. If we didn’t eat our share, so much the better: there’d be more for everyone else.” My grandmother’s favorite was stamppot, a dish produced by boiling potatoes together with kale and then mashing everything up (yes, this results in green mashed potatoes). Dollops of butter and dashes of salt and pepper were the only flavorings used (my relatives considered garlic to be an exotic spice). That stamppot is still one of my favorite dishes tells you a lot about my culinary credentials.
So it was unsurprising that my first forays into French cuisine—as a consumer—were unsuccessful. The first time Philippe brought me to see his parents was perhaps the worst. On the spur of the moment one rainy April morning, just after we started dating, he invited me to visit his parents’ house in Brittany. From Oxford (where we were both studying), it was only
