French Kids Eat Everything (12 page)

“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:

French Food Rule #4:

Food is social
.

Eat family meals together at the table, with no distractions
.

This rule seems to turn North American understandings of food on its head. It's really about
how
to eat, rather than
what
to eat. Of course, this rule (and I encountered lots of variations) has a host of implicit subrules that most people back home would be familiar with. “Don't eat on the run,” for example. Or “don't eat standing up.” Even worse: “don't eat in the car.” These are rules that Americans observe only in the breach.

Absorbing these explanations, I began to understand why adults and kids gather at the table so naturally in France. As a happy by-product, French kids learn how to eat well, for the rules governing eating are more easily reinforced when eating together with adults every evening.

By now, it was nearly midnight. I hadn't seen Sophie and Claire for hours, although I could hear chatter and laughter from another room. My husband peeked in at them and assured me that all was well. Then all the children came running back to the table at the mention of dessert: a simple
mousse au chocolat
with a raspberry sauce that induced a sweet silence for five full minutes.

Sipping coffee and enjoying a few
mignardises
(little round, hard cookies often served at the end of a formal meal), I watched them eat and marveled at how well the evening had gone. I'd never seen a group of children eat so well, or so happily. Even Sophie and Claire had tried new things with much less complaining than usual. The most surprising thing was that everyone thought this was
normal
. Not once during the entire evening did I see a parent force, threaten, or cajole a child into eating anything. No fuss, no resistance, no coercion, and no whining.

It was now, I suddenly realized, well past midnight. I was feeling slightly woozy owing to the late hour, and also perhaps owing to the
chouchen
(sweet Breton apple mead) that had been served after dessert. But I was still excited enough about the ideas I'd been hearing to have a flash of insight. Eating well
and
eating together, for the French, is the cultural equivalent of saying the Pledge of Allegiance, or watching
Hockey Night in Canada
. It's a daily, lived expression of their cultural identity.

“I get it!” I said cheerfully to my hosts. “If asked which inanimate object best represented their culture, many Americans would probably say the car. But most French people would probably say the dining room table!”

This met with approving chuckles. We grinned around the table at one another, our earlier tension forgotten. My hosts and their guests were happy: they had succeeded in explaining French food culture to the satisfaction of a foreigner. And I was happy too, mostly because I had succeeded in making a funny remark (one of my first-ever successes at being witty in French).

Given how easy it all seemed that evening, I felt more confident than ever before about the wisdom of the French approach. What had seemed overwhelming a few months ago—teaching my children how to “eat French”—now seemed manageable. If there were food rules for adults, there must be food rules for children too, I reasoned. I would just have to figure them out and apply them to my own family.

I couldn't wait to get started.

Dans un petit jardin, tout rond, tout rond, tout rond, Il y a des poireaux, des carottes, des radis, des tomates, des pommes de terre, Et une petite rivière qui coule, qui coule, qui coule!

In a little garden, round and round and round, I see leeks, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, and potatoes, And a little river that runs and runs and runs!

—This traditional nursery rhyme is the French version of “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear”

There was one downside to the French approach to late
-night dinners: my kids' internal clocks didn't have a “sleep-in” option. Claire and Sophie had gone to bed well after midnight but had woken at seven in the morning. Lack of sleep seems to have an opposite effect on adults and children: whereas I was groggy, they were wired and excitable.

The day stretching out before us seemed very, very long.

Sitting in our cold kitchen with damp air wafting from the stone walls, I had one of my (many) moments of doubt about our French adventure. Everything had seemed so simple the night before. Learning about French food culture had resolved many of my criticisms and questions. Full of enthusiasm, my resolution about changing my children's eating habits had been heartfelt. I had even shyly shared my idea with Philippe's friends, and they'd sent us home with an armful of cookbooks and warm words of encouragement.

Things seemed different in the pale, gray morning light. All I could think of were excuses and objections.
I don't have enough time. It's too expensive. It won't work: the Americans and the French are just too different!
My energy and enthusiasm waned away.

In the meantime, Sophie and Claire had gotten their hands on the cookbooks, spreading them out on the living room floor. They soon found a favorite, and I peered over their shoulders. The recipes were intriguing: yogurt and avocado smoothies, oven-baked parsnip fries, tomato-strawberry tarts. There was even a baby section, with simple soup recipes designed to be drunk in baby bottles. “My First Red Puree” featured tomato and fennel, followed by “My First Yellow Puree,” combining corn and chicken. My favorite was “My First Green Puree”: peas, mint, and a handful of baby spinach leaves.

The photos were clever too. The authors had figured out something basic about kid psychology: children love to look at real-life pictures of other children. Images of happy kids eating (and cooking) appeared on almost every page. And the photos of the dishes were whimsical and funny. Vegetables and fruits were arranged in a series of faces and shapes, by turns grotesque or coquettish. Tiny little figurines floated in soups or perched on pastries in a
Where's Waldo
style. Claire figured this out quickly: scanning each page, she would search until she found a little
bonhomme
, pointing her pudgy finger with pride. The pages that attracted her most avid attention were, naturally, in the sections on
goûters
and
desserts
.

“Which one is your favorite?” I asked. Sophie finally settled on
palets choco-raisins:
lacy dark chocolate wafers daubed with dried apricots, slivers of almonds, raisins, and hazelnut chunks. Given her aversion to all nuts and seeds, this surprised me. Claire surprised me too, by picking an old French favorite:
gâteau au yaourt
(yogurt cake), a sort of sponge cake with a slight tangy flavor. The recipes actually looked easy: I knew my mother-in-law could whip this cake up in under ten minutes.

I promised the girls that we'd make their chosen desserts later that afternoon. In the meantime, I extracted a promise from Philippe to take them over to play with Marie. I needed some time to think.

After they had gone, I sat down with a cup of strong coffee and went through the books one by one. Some of these were cookbooks, which I put to one side. I was more interested in the books
about
children's food. Virginie and Hugo had also lent me a few books written by doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, and sociologists. As I leafed through them, one term kept appearing that intrigued me:
aliment
. This was a new word for me. I headed to the dictionary in hopes of finding some enlightenment.

Aliment
, it turns out, doesn't translate directly into English. Both
aliment
and
nourriture
are translated as “food,” but these two words do not have the same meaning in French.
Nourriture
is the easy one to define, as it corresponds to the English meaning for food: something you ingest. But
aliment
is more complicated.

Searching for an explanation, I came across a quote from one of the best-known French nutritionists of the twentieth century, Jean Trémolières. He argued that an
aliment
is more than just a nutritious foodstuff. It is also something that can satisfy both emotional and physical appetites; it nourishes both physically and psychologically. In fact, a better translation of “
aliment
” would probably be “a nourishment.”

Somewhere in my head, a light bulb went on.
Aliments
are more than just food.
Aliments
are cultural definitions of things we find nourishing and appetizing. Something that is an
aliment
in one country may not be in another. (Think frog's legs.)