French Kids Eat Everything (30 page)

Was this the case for most kids?
I wondered.
How could we find out?
I didn't relish the thought of hovering outside the day care, canvassing busy parents as they hurried past. But I didn't want to jump to conclusions before going to the day-care manager and suggesting changes to how the children were fed.

Would it be impossible to serve hot meals to the kids, like the French do?
I wondered. Each day care (there were over a dozen side by side) had a fully outfitted kitchen, complete with stove and oven. But it was little used—mostly for reheating staff meals or making light snacks such as muffins.
Would it be possible to start a hot lunch program if enough parents were interested?

“Why don't you do a survey?” suggested Philippe one evening. “It wouldn't be hard to do. There are even free survey websites on line. And that way you'd have more evidence that other parents actually like your idea.”

Daunted, but intrigued, I spent the next few weeks drafting questions and immersing myself in the world of online surveys. One month (and several late-night marathon sessions with SurveyMonkey) later, I had produced my first-ever survey: twenty-one questions about what children ate, what parents fed them, and their interest in a hot lunch program. One Friday night shortly after midnight, I blearily clicked the “send” button on my email, sending the invitation to complete the survey out to the parents.
How many people will even bother to respond?
I wondered grumpily, as I got ready for bed, knowing that Claire would likely be up before 6:00
A.M
.

I was more than pleasantly surprised when, two weeks later, a grand total of 126 families had completed the survey. The survey had gone viral, circulating through the day-care network. And the answers to my questions were often long, thoughtful, and fascinating. Parents had been invited to respond with three actual menus for what they put in their children's lunch. Pasta was hands-down the overall winner in the menus posted by parents, ranging from the straightforward “Pasta and fruit” to the more adventurous “Pasta, spinach nuggets, kiwi, yogurt.” Sandwiches and crackers were close runners-up. Although a few exotic menus stood out (my favorite was “bean/avocado quesadillas, applesauce, red peppers, grapes”), and a few attested to parental culinary devotion (“steamed organic chicken, steamed organic carrots, steamed organic beans, boiled new potatoes, 10%MFG yogurt mixed with organic blueberry puree”), most lunch menus were short and to the point, with none of the elaborate, playful, tempting titles of French dishes at the
cantine
.

I also asked parents their feelings about their kids' lunches and their interest in having a hot lunch program. Reading through the answers, what came through most clearly was parents' fatigue and frustration.

When asked about the potential benefits of a hot lunch program, many parents' responses suggested that they had intuitively grasped the food rules that I had seen at work in France:

And most parents, it seemed, were willing to pay for the hot lunches (one of the issues I had been worried about). One of the questions asked them to calculate how much they were spending on their children's lunches (most people guessed about $3), and the next question asked them how much they would be willing to pay (75 percent of parents were willing to pay $3 per lunch or more). According to the rough calculations I had done, this would be a feasible amount to serve wholesome and nutritious lunches
if
the lunches were mandatory (with few kids, the cost would be too high).

This was the problem. Although three out of every four parents thought that a hot lunch was a good idea, support dropped to just under half if the proposed program was mandatory.

Reading this, I started to get discouraged. And I got even more discouraged when I read the responses to the question about what foods parents would
not
let their children eat. Candy, pork, beef, lamb, eggs, chocolate, nuts, ice cream, strawberries, shellfish, meat, pizza, hot dogs, white sugar, peanut butter, cakes, trans fats, any fat, non-organic food, juice, GMOs, tomatoes, MSG, dairy products, and soy were just a few of the things on the very long list of foods that parents would refuse to serve to their children (although one family—but only one—simply responded: “WE EAT EVERYTHING”).

It was difficult to see how nutritionally complete, varied menus could be served if people's individual preferences were to be totally respected. The parents I surveyed were apparently as picky as their children. And some people's preferences were diametrically opposed, including ardent pro- and anti-vegetarians, protein fanatics and carb lovers, parents ardently convinced of the importance of hot food, and others who served only cold food to their children at lunchtime. The reality of attempting to serve shared, healthy meals to children in a multicultural environment suddenly hit home.

This is impossible
, I thought, my heart sinking.
Parents don't believe that children can learn to eat new things. They want convenience, and they're worried about their children going hungry: they are focused on how much they eat, rather than what they eat. Plus, families have such conflicting food preferences that there is no way to provide satisfying, nutritionally sensible menus for everyone
.

The concept underlying a hot lunch program—the idea that someone other than the parents would control eating and organize the feeding of new foods to their children—seemed to push many parents out of their comfort zones. Preserving individual choice (even if the choice was to eat poor-quality foods with limited variety) seemed, for most parents, to be more important than teaching children to learn to love new foods. I was reminded of the conversation I'd had months before with Philippe's friends.
How can I convince people here that a French approach might work?
I wondered.
In France, I saw the evidence with my own eyes. But here, people have such a hard time believing that there is another way
.

After weeks of thinking about it, I still didn't have an answer. But given that I had put in nearly a month of work, I decided to bring my results to the day-care management anyway. I asked if I could brief the person overseeing the entire day-care network, was given an appointment, and two weeks later dutifully showed up clutching copies of the thirty-two-page report I had prepared, which analyzed the survey results in detail.

Along with a couple of co-workers, the day-care manager and her boss heard me out patiently. I explained that a majority of parents were supportive of a hot lunch program, and I outlined the benefits: less work for parents and better nutrition and food habits for children. Despite the large number of foods on the “do not serve” list that parents had provided, I had managed to come up with a sample set of menus that would, I thought, please everyone, drawing on some of Sophie's school menus in France. A little shyly, I shared some sample dishes (while wryly acknowledging that a year ago I hadn't believed that my children would eat many of these dishes): lentil-apricot soup, apple compote, avocado salad, and green pea risotto.

Silence filled the room as everyone looked through the list. Finally, one staff member put his head up, looked me in the eye, and matter-of-factly said:

“Kids only eat pasta and fishy crackers anyway. Why would you want to cook them all this stuff? It would only get thrown out!”

“But I know that most kids can eat lots of different foods. I've seen it with my own eyes, in France,” I said, stung. “At our day care, one of the staff prepared hot meals for the children every day, and they all learned to eat lots of things—like beets!” I added, a bit weakly. I hadn't planned for this kind of challenge; taken by surprise, I couldn't think of very good arguments.

“Um, and the French have food rules for their children. They really work!” I continued, a little more enthusiastically. “Most French kids eat everything, and like it!”

But before I could continue, someone cut in.

“Our staff has advanced training in early childhood education. They are professionals. Cooking is not part of their job description, nor should it be. They are educators, not cooks.”

“But isn't teaching children how to eat healthily, a variety of things, a balanced diet, isn't that part of educating them?” I feebly offered. Judging by the looks on their faces, I hadn't convinced anyone.

“It's not in their job description, and it shouldn't be,” I was told, politely but firmly.

“Um, we just came back from a year in France, and the day-care workers and teachers there believe that it
is
part of their job description. It's even in the school curriculum,” I offered hesitantly. I didn't want to offend anyone, but I really did hope that they might be inspired by the French example.

“That wouldn't work here,” was the response. “We're too different.”

After that, I didn't have much else to say. The meeting ended quickly, and I left the building in a slight state of disbelief. Even though 75 percent of parents—nearly one hundred families—had supported the idea of a hot lunch, my suggestion had been flatly turned down. I felt a little silly. I was an accidental food activist, and a failed one at that. Who did I think I was, trying to change the world?

Still, I was convinced of the value of the lessons we had learned in France. I had seen with my own eyes that the French approach worked. We couldn't go back to the way we were before. We'd have to figure out how to instill a genuine food culture in our children, even in North America. And parents' beliefs about what foods children could like (hopefully not just pasta and fishy crackers) were the starting point. In thinking about this, I realized there was another rule that I had picked up in France without even being aware of it.

French Food Rule #9:

Eat mostly real, homemade food, and save treats for special occasions
.

(Hint: Anything processed is not “real” food.)

This rule, I decided, was key to feeding children well in North America. First, parents had to serve (and eat) real food rather than processed food. Second, they could allow treats but make sure that “real food” was the majority of what their children were consuming. Now, this rule is not an explicit French Food Rule, because so much of what French people eat is, by default, “real food.” But, I realized, we needed to have something like this in Vancouver in order to maintain the healthy relationship with food that we had established. And this rule summed up a key aspect of the French approach: that the quality of what kids eat is key to healthy eating. This was a corrective to the bias toward processed foods in North American food culture.

Part of this healthy relationship with food arises in France because of something called
terroir
, a word related to the French word for land (
la terre
).
Terroir
refers to a close relationship between people, their land and climate, and their food. So
terroir
might mean drinking apple cider and eating oysters in Brittany, eating Roquefort or drinking rosé in southern France, or eating moose meat and maple syrup in Canada. French people have strong affinities for local foods—there are many cheeses, for example, that are hard to find outside their home
terroir
. And the French have distinct eating habits in different regions: the
galettes
made from “black flour” (buckwheat) that we ate almost every week weren't found in markets outside of Brittany. Even at the big supermarket where I shopped in France, everything from wine to dairy products was labeled with an
appellation d'origine contrôlée
(AOC)—a “label of origin” letting consumers know where their products came from. My favorite supermarket butter, for example, had hand-dried salt from the French town of Guérande. Jo's favorite steak came from Camargue—a swampy region in southern France renowned for its beef. Janine's favorite lamb was from the
prés salés
(literally, salty meadows) in the bay surrounding Mont Saint Michel, where sheep grazed on grass delicately flavored by tidal waters. Even vegetables could receive the label “AOC,” like the
coco de Paimpol
(a savory white bean) that came from a small town west of where we lived, but that was renowned (and sold) all over France. These “labeled” products filled the shelves of the big-box supermarket and weren't much more expensive than “unlabeled” ones.