French Kids Eat Everything

the store. “But you’ll spoil her appetite!” the cashier declared loudly.
Trapped in the line, with the evidence of my food crime visible on my daughter’s crumb-smeared face, I cringed. Whereas I had seen my daughter behaving well, everyone else had seen me behaving badly. “Rewarding your daughter with food is a recipe for obesity,” said an equally stern-faced mother. Nods of agreement came from the other equally stern-faced mothers in the line. I ran to the car, fumed all the way home, and threw all of my daughter’s mini-snack food containers in the garbage. (Well, except for the one in my purse, in case of a real emergency.) But, later that night, I fished them out. What would I do without them the next time?
The “Supermarket Incident” (as I labeled it), provoked some serious reflection on my part. From the French point of view, I was committing many food faux pas. I summed these up with a second food rule:
French Food Rule #2:
Avoid emotional eating.
Food is not a pacifier, a distraction, a toy, a bribe, a reward, or a substitute for discipline.
For the French, this rule is so obvious that it is never even spoken aloud. But for me, this rule was incomprehensible, at least at first. To accept it, I had to abandon the belief (widespread in North America) that it is normal to use food for purposes entirely unrelated to hunger or nutrition.
Food is a pacifier: we give kids something to eat when they’re impatient, when they’re tired, when they’re whining, when we need just a few more minutes on the phone. This is a slippery slope. Kids (my own included) soon learn that whining works. For busy or distracted parents, this can result in an almost Pavlovian reaction: Kid Whines = Food, Fast. This often happens when we’re on the run, or running late. But the danger is that it sets up a cycle in which snack food makes up the bulk of what kids eat, leaving them with little appetite for the more nutritious foods served at mealtimes.
For many parents, food is also a welcome distraction: we open the cupboards and look for something to eat when the kids are at a loose ends, or when they’re bored, whether or not they’re hungry. “Why don’t we make some cookies?” I’d say to my daughters. “Or a cake?” At one level, this seems harmless. It can even be educational: teaching volume with measuring cups or learning manual dexterity with chopsticks. But the French feel that random snacking—even dressed up as math lessons—encourages a habit of impulsive eating that is hard to break later on. They love to invite children into the kitchen to cook (and even organize special cooking camps for them), but they make sure to organize this around scheduled mealtimes.
Food, in North America, is also sometimes used as a substitute for discipline. Parents withhold food as a punishment, and use the threat of withholding food to enforce good behavior: “Stop teasing your sister or you’ll go to bed without supper!” Conversely, food is a bribe. “Do this and you’ll get some ice cream!” Worst of all, food is a reward. One of Sophie’s preschool teachers used to reward the children with candy for good behavior. French parents, as a rule, don’t punish (or reward) with food, believing that this imbues food with emotional baggage—and that their children will, later on, attempt to deal with (or bury) their emotions through eating. This, in their view (which is supported by US and French research), has many negative consequences—not the least of which is disrupting children’s ability to regulate their eating habits, increasing the risk of eating disorders.
Perhaps the deepest difference of all between North American and French parents is their attitude to playing with food. The parenting books I read after Sophie was born encouraged me to allow her to play with her food—to finger it, mouth it, even throw it. I patiently draped large sheets of plastic over and around her highchair, and let her go at it. (This was one of the practices that had my in-laws convinced I was truly an irresponsible parent.)
In fact, lots of toddlers that we knew played with food. Back home, before we moved to France, staff at Sophie’s day care used to play the “farmyard” game. Cheerfully opening a box of Cheerios, they would scatter them on the floor and laugh with delight as the toddlers, cackling, pretended to be chickens, leaning over and pecking the cereal directly off the floor. For the French, who won’t even sit on the floor to eat, this type of behavior is unfathomable. (Anticipating the reactions, I still have yet to tell this story to a single soul in France. It would be hard for them to comprehend that the staff were wonderful caregivers, despite this anecdote.)
Given this history, observing the second French Food Rule was a challenge for me: when we arrived in France, I was using food as a reward, a bribe, a toy, a distraction, and a substitute for discipline. The problem, from the French perspective, was that I was teaching my kids to use food as a response to emotional needs, which have little or no nutritional basis. When bored, our kids turn to food. When they’re tired, they eat. When they’re upset, they eat. A French child would never think to do this. They’re just not programmed that way. French kids, like their parents, rarely eat for what psychologists and nutritionists term “non-nutritive” reasons. Rather, they have a deeply respectful attitude toward food.
This respectful attitude is taught to very young children in France, sometimes in the oddest (at least to my eyes) of places. The first time I went to a restaurant gastronomique, just before Philippe and I were married, I was astonished at the reverential atmosphere. Conversations were hushed, and long, appreciative silences followed the arrival of each course as we savored the new tastes and textures. The furnishings reflected the formality of the occasion: