French Kids Eat Everything (17 page)

After the story, the children were again interviewed. Two-thirds of the children in Group B (the “positive message” group) could identify the kohlrabi correctly. All of the children were again invited to taste the kohlrabi. The only children who refused to do so were in Group A (the “negative message” group). And more than two-thirds of the children who tasted the kohlrabi said that they liked it.

This is admittedly a quirky experiment. But it demonstrates an important fact: kids' food tastes are more adaptable than many of us would believe. Even more important, this experiment shows how simple it is to cultivate kids' love of food. If adults joyfully and mindfully incorporate positive messages about food—
all
food—into everyday life, then kids will learn to eat all sorts of things. And peer pressure works: if other kids and adults eat these things, even the most unwilling kids will probably do so too.

France, I realized, was a country where the kohlrabi experiment has been running for hundreds of years. By the time they are three years old, the only things that most French children have yet to taste are alcohol and offal (organ meats), a French delicacy that most will soon learn to love. Of course, the French are not unusual. Back home in Vancouver, we saw this all around us. The kids in the Indian family across the street loved
dahl
(lentil soup) and spices like turmeric. Sophie's Mexican friend loved hot sauce. Claire's Polish friend brought sauerkraut in her lunch. Kids' food preferences are, in other words, more malleable than most American parents would believe.

Of course, French kids—like kids anywhere—sometimes tend to be uncomfortable trying new foods. From chatting with Philippe's cousin Christelle—who now ran a day-care program in the French city of Lyon—I learned the scientific word for the fear of new foods: neophobia (literally, fear of novelty). Neophobia, she told me, usually appears at about the age of two (more or less the age at which children start feeding themselves). According to her, scientists disagree about why it arises. It may be a protective behavior: young children who are afraid of eating new things are less likely to poison themselves. It may have an evolutionary basis: in nature, the foods that are sweet, fat, or salty tend to have the highest nutritional value and are the least likely to be poisonous. Or it may be primarily psychological, appearing as kids enter a developmental phase of opposition to their parents (the infamous “terrible twos” and the dreaded “No! phase”). And some experts also believe that neophobia may be related to kids' developing taste buds, which lead them to reject bitter tastes (often found in vegetables) and favor sweet, fat, and salty tastes as more innately pleasurable.

Whatever the explanation, Christelle told me, French experts agree on two things. First, although there is a genetic, biological component to food dislikes, there is also an important cultural component. Kids
learn
what to like or dislike. And this starts early; some research suggests that flavor experiences in the first year of life can influence food acceptance, and even food preferences, later on in life. Second, neophobia is a developmental
phase
, not a lifelong condition (although it can develop into a personality trait if badly handled by parents).

My conversations with Christelle gave me hope. Her ideas corresponded with what I'd heard from French parents. According to them, neophobia (although they didn't call it that) is primarily a psychological condition. French parents expected that children might refuse new foods, but they viewed this as both normal and temporary. When I asked, most parents thought that their kids were testing limits rather than really expressing a true dislike of the food offered to them. And they insisted that it was important not to enter into a power struggle: if their kids refused food, their parents would simply take it away, with little fuss. But no substitutes would be provided—and parents held firm to this rule.

This quote from a French parenting book is typical: “Opposition to food can't persist if there is no opponent. In the face of a child's refusal to eat, the best parental response is serene indifference. Parents should remind themselves: ‘I know this will pass. My child will not continue refusing to eat if I simply refuse to react.'” Indifference and serenity were not attitudes I had been cultivating, but I had to admit this sounded much less stressful than my usual approach.

French parents also believe that there are very few foods that truly taste bad. So their view is that most kids are capable of eating most things. Of course, some foods are likely to be distasteful—like the strong taste of raw garlic. But most of the foods that kids won't eat (like broccoli) don't actually taste objectively bad. From the French point of view, most of kids' aversion to food is psychological, rather than physiological.

The French have internalized these ideas in their everyday parenting culture. They believe that kids are inherently curious about food, that most foods are an acquired taste, and that it is the role of parents to help children. So educating their children to enjoy a variety of foods is one of the most important parenting tasks in the toddler years. To do this, the French parents I knew tried to develop what they saw as their babies' innate curiosity about (and love of) trying new foods. In fact, a little more digging on the Internet turned up some scientific research that backed them up: infants are consistently interested in trying new foods (just as they always prefer the new toy in the room). And tasting new foods when kids are still young can influence food preferences later on. That's not all: the French studies that Christelle sent to me suggested that many children (about one in four) have little or no neophobia; if parented appropriately, they will happily continue trying new things and will never develop aversions to new foods.

The priority that French parents give to eating as pleasure also means that French parents are not overly controlling with their children. They instinctively know that parental anxiety and pressure can backfire. Feeding children is not about forcing children: often, this means they eat less cooperatively (as I found out the hard way before Christmas). So punitive rules aren't applied. Rather, rules are about positive discipline, combined with unquestioned routines that make it seem entirely natural for French children to try new foods. This reduces pressure on kids—and on parents. One example is the helpful rule that French parents use to get children to try new things:

French Food Rule #6a:

For picky eaters:
You don't have to
like
it, but you do have to
taste
it
.

The girls' Papi (grandfather) is a master at applying this rule when introducing children to new foods. The trick is to get the kids to take the initiative rather than forcing the issue. For example, he might pick his moment while everyone is enjoying an
apéritif
before dinner, which involves drinking some sort of cocktail and nibbling on salty snacks like olives, crackers, pâté, or nuts. French children adore
l'apéritif
, perhaps because of its informality; it is the only socially sanctioned snack that French adults eat. And it's the only time when the family doesn't eat at the dining room table;
l'apéritif
is taken seated comfortably in the living room. For the children, for whom eating standing up (or anywhere but at the table) is strictly forbidden,
l'apéritif
has a slightly Carnavalesque feel—a ritualized way of breaking the rules that feels festive and fun.

So, when Papi asks them to try something new during
l'apéritif
, our kids are usually happy to accept. An olive might be casually offered. If the child resists, a gentle murmur of encouragement arises from the adults and older children.
Vas-y!
(Go ahead!) But the child is not forced to do anything. Adult conversation continues, and no great fuss is made.

Usually, our children cautiously test the food, most often when there are no eyes on them. Their reactions (whether pleasurable or not) are met with calm acceptance. A child might politely respond, “
Non, merci
.” “Didn't like it? That's okay. You'll try again later.” Or, “Great, you liked that olive? Try this one.” And a new bowl holding a different type of olives slides across the table. This happens over and over again, at regular intervals, over a period of a month or two. Eventually, the child usually starts eating the new food.

Papi's technique displays a key element of the French approach to children's eating habits. They don't fuss. They don't hover. No one is anxious. Parents are cheerful but matter-of-fact. Above all, if the child refuses to eat, the parents simply take the food away without too much comment, without providing substitutes. And because of the “no snacking” rule, they know that their child will be hungrier at the next meal, which will work to their advantage.

As a result, food never becomes a power struggle. Rather, food is part of a routine. It's a fun routine with lots of novelty and socializing, but it is still a routine. Children unquestioningly come to the table, accept that their parents choose what they'll eat, expect to be pleasantly surprised, and, for the most part, enjoy every mouthful. There is a kind of innocence about this that always amazes me. It simply doesn't occur to most French kids to resist.

How do French parents do this?
Part of the answer is the fact that they assert authority over the scheduling of feeding when their children are still very young. I saw this for myself when Sophie was a baby. Like most babies we knew, Sophie was breast-fed on demand, which meant three hours (or often less) between feedings. At eight months of age, Sophie's eating schedule looked something like this (although it changed every day):

1:00
A.M
. ~ breast-feeding

4:00
A.M
. ~ breast-feeding

7:00
A.M
. ~ breast-feeding

8:30
A.M
. ~ baby cereal

(20-minute nap)

11:30
A.M
. ~ breast-feeding

12:30
P.M
. ~ vegetable puree, baby crackers

(20-minute nap)

2:30
P.M
. ~ breast-feeding

(20-minute nap)

5:00
P.M
. ~ breast-feeding

6:00
P.M
. ~ fruit compote, or yogurt

(20-minute nap)

9:00
P.M
. ~ breast-feeding

(in bed for the night)

If this sounds exhausting, it's because it was. My husband and I would exchange grim looks as we headed to bed, hoping against hope that Sophie would sleep through the night (she was fourteen months old the first time she did so, and I still quietly celebrate that anniversary every year). She was getting thirteen hours of sleep, and we were averaging less than six, broken up by the 1:00
A.M
. and 4:00
A.M
. feedings. I was a zombie.

This drove me into a bout of the “baby blues” (although not full-blown postpartum depression): between sessions of sleep-deprivation–induced crying, I frantically read any book on children's sleep that I could get my hands on. I tried the No-Cry Sleep Solution. I tried attachment parenting–style rocking to sleep. Finally, in desperation, I tried Ferber-ization (otherwise known as “crying it out”), but I broke down after about a minute and a half. Nothing worked. Sophie woke up like clockwork at 1:00
A.M
. and 4:00
A.M.
, and went back to sleep only with a contented belly full of milk. My milk.

One of the things that made this somewhat bearable was my assumption that this was the fate of all mothers. But then we went to visit some of my husband's old friends—French friends. The couple had an eight-month-old baby, and I figured I could commiserate with a similarly frazzled new mom. Except that she wasn't frazzled at all.

At eight months, baby Clément's eating schedule looked like this:

8:00
A.M
. ~ wake up, 240 ml milk

(2- to 3-hour nap)

12:30
P.M
. ~ Vegetable soup, fruit puree, or yogurt

(2- to 3-hour nap)

4:30
P.M
. ~ 240 ml milk

(1-hour nap)

7:00
P.M
. ~ 250 ml milk with dissolved baby cereal

(in bed for the night)

The first day of our visit, I watched in amazement as little Clément—who was understandably hungry at mealtimes—guzzled his milk, devoured his purees, and contentedly napped for hours after every meal. He slept soundly through the night, every night of our visit.

Clément's four meals were served at precisely the same time every day. Meals were never served early, not by even five minutes. In between meals, he was given only water. Clément quickly learned that adults decided what he ate, where he ate (only in his highchair), and when he ate. His patience was astounding: he never, or very rarely, cried out of hunger. In fact, given the quantities of food he ate at his meals, I wondered whether he ever felt very hungry.

Most French children are raised like Clément (who, by the way, has grown into a happy, healthy eater-of-everything). By the time they are toddlers, French children have learned that their parents are in charge of their eating routines. This means that they are fairly willing to accept that they have to taste new things. And, once they have gotten used to this idea, French parents take the next step: