French Kids Eat Everything

the elite, it’s for everyone in France!” he insisted. “Sarkozy is seeking recognition for the art of everyday eating. Everyone in France learns this art and celebrates it!”
“Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger (one should eat to live, and not live to eat)!” he concluded, triumphantly. I must have had a blank look on my face; under his breath, Philippe explained that it was from a play by Molière (who I knew was roughly the French equivalent of Shakespeare).
“But you do live to eat,” I responded. “Just look at what we’re doing tonight!” I added.
“Art means using your imagination, being skillful at something,” explained Hugo patiently. “You can approach lots of things like an art, like setting the table beautifully,” he said, nodding at the table next to us.
“It does look lovely,” I offered, hoping to sound conciliatory. Virginie beamed. I gathered my courage: “But isn’t eating like this a little, well, bourgeois?”
“Mais non!” Hugo protested. “My father was a bus driver! I work for a telephone company. I grew up in a very ordinary family. We all did,” he said, gesturing to everyone around him.
At this, the other guests gradually stopped talking among themselves; one by one, they followed Hugo’s lead in an attempt to prove that good eating was not the sole preserve of la bourgeoisie. I had to admit that they seemed to have a point. Virginie was a nutritionist, and Chloé worked in a factory, organizing logistics and deliveries. Antoine ran his own small business, providing marketing advice to small companies. Frédéric, an engineer, worked as a manager for a big concrete company, but—like most of Philippe’s friends—came from “modest origins.” And I knew that Philippe’s parents had left school in their teens and gone to work in the shop owned by Philippe’s grandfather. His maternal grandmother had been a washerwoman for a hotel, lugging loads of heavy laundry in big paniers on her back, and washing, drying, and ironing them by hand.
I realized, wilting, that my comment had been inappropriate. But before I could get a word in edgewise, Virginie jumped in. “Actually, Americans are the elitist ones, the snobs!” she argued. “Only the middle class and the wealthy have access to good food and eat well. No one else! In France, everyone eats well—good food is for everyone, no matter rich or poor. We’re actually much more egalitarian than you are,” she concluded triumphantly.
This statement ignited all of my pent-up frustration about Sophie’s experience at school. Before I could stop myself, I retorted, “But few people are really that interested in eating such fancy food. And it’s a terrible idea to make everyone eat the same way. People should be allowed to choose what they want to eat!”
“But choose what?” said Antoine, Philippe’s closest friend, with a smile. “Sure, Americans are free to choose, but they end up making terrible choices. They have no standards for what, when, or how they eat. And they often eat alone. We all know the result!”
I paused at this, in part because it was so hard for me to translate Antoine’s comment. What he’d said was: “N’importe quoi, n’importe quand, n’importe comment, et souvent seul.” The French phrase n’importe quoi is hard to translate, as it is a dismissive term that can be used in a variety of ways. French people often use it to mean “whatever” (like American adolescents), or “nonsense,” or even “garbage.” So Antoine’s comment implied that Americans eat poor-quality food, at all hours of the day, with no thought given to manners. This felt a little too close for comfort as I remembered the snacks Sophie gobbled in haste in our crumb-filled car after school and the pasta we served night after night at home.
Meanwhile, Antoine’s comment had sparked a small tsunami of remarks. The French have a love-hate relationship with Americans, and something had been unleashed by our exchange. As so often with the French, this took the form of escalating sequences of witty one-liners and wordplays (the kind I often had trouble understanding, much less inventing).
“Americans think food is just a commodity; a matter of convenience (une commodité),” sniffed Frédéric.
“But they usually treat eating like it is inconvenient (incom-mode)!” said his wife, Chloé, laughing. (I had figured out by now that she was my husband’s ex-girlfriend, and I permitted myself a small evil-eye glare directed her way.)
“Americans think that money spent on food is wasted because it goes in one day, out the next,” said Inès, laughing.
“The real problem is that Americans eat like children. American food is infantile,” said Virginie gravely. She had spent several years living in the States and worked as a nutritionist at the local school board.
“Americans behave like two-year-olds at the table!” she continued, getting into her stride. “They are impulsive eaters: they snack all the time! They have no self-control: they don’t know when to stop eating. And their servings are much too large! They have childlike tastes: they love to eat fatty, sugary foods—exactly the kind of thing kids love.” She finished, damningly, with “Americans have no taste! Just compare a croissant to a doughnut!”
This, of course, met with approving nods, as well as a few blank stares (“What’s a ‘doo-not’?” I heard one husband whisper to his wife).
As the target of all of this, I didn’t know what to say. But I felt that I had to say something. I summoned up my courage, and croaked out, “I think your approach to eating is way too fussy and regimented. How can you expect everyone to eat like this?” My comment was met with silence. Luckily, Philippe came to my rescue. He had left France nearly fifteen years ago and had lived all over the world. So, more than anyone in the room, he had a balanced view. “Both cultures have good aspects,” he said mildly. “French people do eat better than Americans, and their approach makes sense. But you can’t impose a uniform way of eating in a country