French Kids Eat Everything

often eat alone in their bedrooms watching TV (even if there are other family members in the house), or alone at their desks at work, they are truly astonished.
Convivialité is also one of the primary sources of the pleasure that French people associate with food. Why? Because the French make a point of having fun while eating. Pointed jokes, witty repartee, critical appreciation of the food: the French zest for life is perhaps no more apparent than at the table. This is one of the main reasons that French children learn to eat so well (and spend so long at the table, uncomplainingly): the table is a place of emotional warmth and connection. It is also a place where they learn not only about how the world works (from listening to their parents talk), but also about conversation skills (how to interact with adults, how to argue without offending someone, and how to listen well).
Another aspect of convivialité is that people are not only expected to eat together; they are expected to eat the same thing together. Meals are about the collective enjoyment of a set of dishes, not individual choice about what to eat. (The French sociologist Claude Fischler calls this the “communal” approach to eating together, in contrast to the American “contractual” approach). This is a great way to teach children to eat new foods; scientific studies have shown that they are much more likely to try something new if an adult has tried it first.
This was another finicky French food habit that I had trouble getting my head around. And it was one that often led to disputes. The night before, I had suggested to my husband that we phone Virginie and Hugo to explain to them what our children liked (and didn’t like) to eat. From my point of view, this was polite, because it would allow everyone to avoid embarrassment at dinner. But for Philippe, this was the height of incivility. My in-laws happened to be over as we began our exchange (Note to self: Never make controversial suggestions to your husband in front of your mother-in-law). Philippe’s mother couldn’t resist jumping into our debate.
“Guests,” said Janine, with a severe look on her face, “have an obligation to please their hosts. Telling people you dislike food, especially food they might prepare for you, is simply bad manners.” She used the term mal éduqué to drive her point home; as soon as those words were out of her mouth, I knew I’d lost the argument. Pointing out that this would trample my individual autonomy, or that I considered forcing someone to eat something they didn’t like to be bad manners, would have no effect. I might protest, but Philippe’s mother’s belief in the supremacy of the French worldview was unshakeable.
Next, over fromage and salade, we moved on to the second principle: le goût. Virginie began by explaining why le goût (which roughly translates as “taste”) is so important. For the French, it is very important that things taste good, and people spend a lot of time making sure they do, even for the smallest of children. Taste, in this sense, is about more than the physical sense of tasting things. Rather, it is a kind of savoir faire transmitted by shared experience, and embedded within a broader culture. For French people, bon goût really matters.
This focus on bon goût is of supreme importance in French culture. It isn’t really a form of snobbery (although there is certainly some of that). Rather, le goût is a shared social identity, which is bound up with French culture. It’s the primary thing that matters to French people when considering how much they like or enjoy something. The equivalent principle for North Americans would be price, or choice. Good taste (and thus good food) isn’t something complicated and reserved for gourmets—it’s for everyone.
It was sometimes hard for me to take the French attachment to bon goût seriously. But the intensity with which Philippe’s family and friends would utter the ritual phrases condemning bad taste—“c’est du mauvais goût” or “ça fait mal aux yeux!” (literally, it hurts the eyes)—made me realize that the French take the issue of taste very seriously indeed. This has its downsides: French people are very sensitive to questions of goût and, as a result, tend to focus on the negative. They always seem to be complaining about what they don’t like about something (or someone). They even have a word for the kind of complaining harangue in which the French specialize: râler, which roughly translates as “loud, sustained grumbling and complaining.” (I think of it as the adult version of whining, and have still not, after all of these years, gotten used to it.)
There is one positive effect of this, though: there is a constant one-upmanship embedded in French culture; people aren’t afraid to tell each other how they could improve or what they aren’t doing right. This is one of the main reasons, I came to realize, that everything in France is so beautifully done: people are openly demanding of the very high standards associated with their understanding of bon goût.
The third principle of French food culture is the one that I’d already started learning the hard way: food rules. In France, Hugo explained, eating is governed by shared social norms (les règles, or rules) about when, where, how much, and how food is consumed. These rules are some of the first things that French children begin learning—before they learn to read, or even to walk and talk. The rules gently guide all aspects of eating and create a set of shared food rituals across all of France. In fact, the word gastronomie literally means “rules of the stomach” (from the Latin nomos [rules] and gastro [stomach]). But these are not ironclad, oppressive regulations; they are more like habits. And (after much debate), the dinner guests agreed that the most important rule—the one that enabled all of the other ones to be maintained—was the following: