We arrived at his parents’ house—a picture-perfect stone cottage covered in vines—in time for lunch. The meal, for me, was unforgettable. Bathing in sunlight on the terrasse, Philippe and his parents treated themselves to a plate full of local seafood, most of which was suspicious-looking shellfish the likes of which I had never even seen, much less tasted. When I was a kid, the closest I got to fish (and the closest I wanted to get) was the canned tuna casserole that my sister and I loathed, and that my mother topped with potato chips in an attempt to bribe us to eat. (My sister usually caved in, but I never did.)
I gave the shellfish a pass, only to find myself confronted with a large sole purchased that same morning, Philippe’s mother proudly announced, fresh off the fisherman’s boat at the local wharf. Confronted with a whole fish on a plate, I felt totally helpless; never having eaten anything like this, I had no idea where to start. So I sat, cheeks burning, while Philippe cut up my sole in front of his bemused parents. It was years before I felt at ease eating fish, and I confess to feeling ambivalent (to say the least) about serving it to my children. So you could say (and I certainly felt) that my daughters came by their limited eating repertoires somewhat honestly.
Philippe, however, was frustrated by our family’s eating saga. On most matters, the relaxed attitudes of North Americans suited him just fine (in fact, he preferred them to the more rigid, formal French manners). But he was perplexed by the way our daughters ate, particularly in comparison with their French cousins, all enthusiastic eaters. And his extended family back in France was more than perplexed. They were quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) outraged.
Looking back, I now realize they were expecting me to educate my children about food. According to the French, this should start when children are very young, well before their first birthday. After all, eating is one of the first acts that an infant performs consciously, and then independently, even before walking and talking. This provides a wonderful basis for discipline: firm but gentle guidance about life’s rules. I use the word “rules” hesitantly, because although the French approach to food education is highly structured, these are not rigid regulations. Rather, they’re more like commonsense routines, or social habits: unwritten, and often unspoken, but collectively accepted. Like most cultural codes, these rules are often mysterious to the outsider, but not particularly complicated once they’ve been explained; in fact, they are often deceptively simple. This was the case with the first “food rule” that I figured out:
French Food Rule #1:
Parents: You are in charge of your children’s food education.
The belief that parents should actively educate their children about food in a gently authoritative way is at the heart of the French approach to kids’ food. Deep down, I knew that this approach—which was much more authoritative than my approach—might benefit my children. But for a long time, I resisted it. Fostering independent eating was an important step in building autonomy, right? The kids should be in charge of their own eating, right?
Absolument pas! Absolutely not! That is a recipe for disaster! warned my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, the cousins, aunts and uncles, and Philippe’s friends. Given how their children ate, I had to admit they seemed to have a point. During our first visit back to France after Sophie was born, when she was just eight months old, I watched in amazement as other babies her age devoured everything their parents gave them and contentedly napped for hours after every meal. Sophie, meanwhile, was fussy at mealtimes. She played with her food, spat it out, and clearly viewed eating as an annoying interruption in her daily schedule. Most of her meals—the sweetest apple puree, the smoothest mashed banana, the creamiest yogurt—would end up dribbled on her bib, her hands, and my lap (where she preferred to sit, regarding the highchair as some kind of torture device). It’s not that she wasn’t hungry. But when she woke up during the night, or after her achingly short naps, she wanted milk. And only milk. She had, to say the least, an ambivalent relationship with solid food, which didn’t improve as she got older.
At the time, I assumed that Sophie took after me rather than after the French side of the family. One of my sister’s favorite photos—and the first one she showed to Philippe when I took him home to meet the family—is of me in a highchair: pursed lips, cheeks red from crying, carrot puree smeared on my psychedelic 1970s-era overalls. The wallpaper behind me has a retro orange texture (a closer look reveals methodical splatters worthy of Extreme Makeover). The way my family tells it, I won every food fight we ever got into.
“Sophie is just like me,” I would sigh. “I hated vegetables when I was young.”
“Mais non!” I was told, “she just hasn’t tried them enough times yet. When she’s really hungry, serve them again. Then she’ll eat anything and everything.” At this point, I started to wonder. Maybe, just maybe, the French know something I don’t. And I was right. They did know some things I didn’t. French parents are provided with very different information about food, and about children’s eating habits, than American parents. This is because French doctors, teachers, nutritionists, and scientists view the
