French Kids Eat Everything (25 page)

The most important thing is to enjoy your food
.

As the researchers concluded: “Pleasure was a crucial dimension of nutrition, emphasized by both parents and children.” Here, French kids' attitudes echo those of their parents, just like those of kids anywhere. In international surveys, North Americans associate food most with health and least with pleasure. The French are at the opposite extreme: they are the most pleasure-oriented and the least health-oriented about food. And pleasurable eating, for the French, means slowing down. You just can't get much pleasure out of a meal if you're in a rush. This is so important that it qualifies as another French Food Rule:

French Food Rule #8:

Take your time, for both cooking and eating
.

Slow food is happy food
.

This rule is seemingly straightforward. But it is profound in its implications because it means that the
how
and
why
of eating, for the French, is very different than it is for North Americans. Nutrition isn't the primary goal of eating. Fueling yourself (and feeling full) isn't the primary goal of eating. Personal health is not the goal, nor is weight loss.

Rather,
enjoyment
is the goal of eating. You can't enjoy yourself if you are wolfing down your food, or worrying about your weight, counting calories, keeping score of micronutrient consumption, or rushing from one place to another in the car. Variety is a happy side effect of this approach (because new foods are interesting and thus make the French happy), but it is not the primary goal. The goal is to derive pleasure from food—
all
food. Eating well doesn't arise from guilt, and eating isn't an anxious exercise.

For the French, the enjoyment of eating arises because they slow down, savor their food, and find deep meaning in sharing it with other people. The midday meal, for example, is a quasi-sacred event during the day. Whatever they are doing—no matter how stressful, busy, or demanding—the French deliberately pause, savor tasty food, and share the moment with friends, family, or colleagues. It's as if the entire nation takes a big, collective sigh of relief before plunging back into the rat race.

So when we moved back to France, it is no surprise that my husband was in his element. He came alive at mealtime—full of jokes and smiles. After a big meal with friends, he was energized. It literally felt as if his batteries were recharged. This seemed a little ironic, given that the pace of the meals seemed positively lethargic to me. It even seemed contradictory; after all, the French were so fast at doing so many other things.

I asked Virginie, in the hope that she would solve the mystery for me. “We hurry up our lives, in order to slow down at mealtimes,” she told me. “Slowing down means that you eat less and enjoy your food more.” I wasn't quite convinced until she showed me a scientific study in which two researchers (one French, one American) weighed servings of identical meals at McDonald's restaurants in Paris and Philadelphia. The serving sizes were wildly different: a medium-size serving of fries at McDonald's in Philadelphia was 72 percent bigger than at McDonald's in Paris. The researchers also timed people's meals: twenty-two minutes in Paris versus fourteen minutes in Philadelphia.

After spending endless hours at the table with Philippe's family, I knew what the French were doing: chewing slowly, appreciating the food, deliberately “taking a pause,” and in many cases chatting and joking nonstop (few French customers at McDonald's ate alone). They were eating mindfully (which has the notable advantage of allowing the body's signals of fullness to kick in before you've finished eating). This is the irony of the French “slow food” approach: the French take longer to eat less. The practical advantage, Virginie explained to me, is that it helps children (and adults) be more sensitive to their feelings of hunger and fullness. This is based on a sense of
équilibre
(balance), which is, in turn, associated with the principle of moderation: pleasure through self-restraint, based on an appreciation of quality (rather than quantity). My mother-in-law's approach to desserts summed it up: “A little portion is all I need. Otherwise, I won't enjoy it as much.”

Even the words used to talk about eating are revealing. Instead of saying “I'm full,” French people will say “
Je n'ai plus faim
” (literally, I'm not hungry anymore). Parents will encourage kids to “
manger à sa faim
” (eat until they are satisfied). They don't ask “Are you full?” but rather “Are you satisfied?” or “Have you had enough?”

Finally, I understood why our friend Virginie felt that American food habits are infantile. What she was really saying was that we haven't learned an adult approach to how to eat. The most important adult eating skill is the ability to listen to your body's signals, to know when your hunger has been satisfied, and to be satisfied with reasonable portions. The lyrics of “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” (which I'd sung for years before asking myself what they meant) sum it up: growing up and adopting a reasonable, rational, responsible approach to life means abandoning childish tastes and behaviors.

Perhaps this is why “fast food” hasn't really taken off in France to the same extent as in the United States. When we first arrived, I assumed it didn't really exist at all because there wasn't a single fast-food or takeout restaurant in our village. But then Sandrine pointed out the little french fry stand tucked away behind the marina. And, she told me, all of the bigger towns in France had fast-food restaurants—including McDonald's. True enough: there was a McDonald's off the highway in the nearest big town, and the parking lot often looked full as we drove by.

Curious about how much fast food the French ate, I asked Véronique to look up some statistics. As it turns out, Americans spend nearly half of their food budgets away from home. In France, only 20 percent of the food budget is spent on food outside the home, and much of this is for the high-quality meals that children (and their parents) get at the school (or office)
cantine
. And any food that isn't prepared the proper, traditional way is called “la
mal bouffe
” (bad grub, a deliberately vulgar term). The distinction drawn by the French is absolutely clear: only “real” food is called
nourriture
(or
aliments)
. The rest is somehow suspect. In particular, the French don't
want
their food to be fast (on the assumption that food prepared quickly must have been carelessly prepared and will be of lower quality). One popular, home-grown French version of fast food captures this difference: the frozen food giant Picard (whose outlets in central Paris outnumber the metro stations). Parisians might shop at Picard, but when they do they buy meals like
cuisses de grenouilles
(frog's legs) and
pavés d'autruche grillés
(yes, a grilled ostrich dish). Even “fast” food could be “slow.”

My daughters certainly heard this point of view from their grandparents. The first time we drove past the McDonald's on the highway was a cross-cultural lesson for all of us. We'd been out visiting Philippe's cousin Christine, who ran an art gallery on the other side of the bay. It was late and getting dark, and we were all tired and hungry.

“Yum!” said Sophie. “I want to stop at McDonald's!”

“Their food tastes terrible,” replied Janine.

“But it won't take long,” insisted Sophie.

“And that's
why
the food tastes terrible!” responded Jo, with an air of absolute finality.

“We'll make you much better French fries, from scratch, at home,” added Mamie—and that's exactly what she did.

Needless to say, we didn't go to McDonald's, and my in-laws would never even think of bringing the children there. But some of the teenagers in the village thought otherwise. Our babysitter, Camille, was a frequent visitor.

“Why do you like McDonald's?” I asked her one afternoon, out of curiosity. “There are so many good French restaurants you could go to.”

“Well, my parents don't like me going, but it's cheap, and I like it,” she replied. “There are no rules. Sort of like the United States, right?”

Describing a visit to McDonald's as an act of teenage rebellion made me smile. But in a funny way it captured the idea of freedom that many French people associate with the United States. French youth—my husband among them—have been rebelling since the late 1960s against the rules that govern French society, and fast food is just one more means of doing so. Philippe still remembers one ad from his college days, when McDonald's had just arrived in the rather remote corner of Brittany where he was studying. A child's voice recites a long list of table manners (“Don't play with your food,” “Don't eat with your fingers,” “Don't make noise at the table,” “Don't put your elbows on the table”) as images of people eating in a McDonald's—while breaking each rule—scroll across the screen. He remembers being fascinated by the bright colors, hard plastics, strangely friendly staff, and instant food. “It felt,” he recalls, “like a child had designed the restaurant, sort of like a playroom, but with adult-size furniture.”

Some of our friends worried about the attraction that fast food had for young French people (which Hugo referred to disdainfully as “McDonaldization” and Virginie called “vagabond feeding”). A documentary that Sandrine brought me to see—
Nos enfants nous accuseront
(Our Children Will Accuse Us)—summed up French fears: a combination of agro-industry, agricultural pollution, junk food, fast food, and globalization that threatened to undermine people's health, French culture, and even the French landscape. By the end of the movie, we were both crying.

One of the people featured in the film was José Bové, a French farmer who was arrested for dismantling a McDonald's in his hometown of Millau in southern France. By the time we moved to France, Bové was a national hero and an elected deputy to the European Parliament. But his McDonald's antics were what the French remembered (and adored) him for. Together with other protestors, he had managed to disassemble much of the building, tile by tile and bolt by bolt, and cart the pieces away to be deposited on the lawn of the local town hall before being stopped by police. Bruno Rebelle, head of Greenpeace France, summed up the outpouring of national support: “You see, in the United States, food is fuel. Here, it's a love story.”

But the problem was that food wasn't a love story for me (at least not at first). The real issue, I had begun to realize, was how I prioritized (or, rather, didn't prioritize) the time necessary for making, and enjoying, good food. I resented spending time in the kitchen but would happily spend hours every week ferrying Sophie to music lessons and insisting (no matter how much she protested) that she practice. I had to confess to myself that, deep down, my children's success was more important to me than teaching them to eat well. I came to this realization one day as we walked home from Marie's house after another lovely long dinner: roast chicken from the local farm, some new spring
mâche
(lamb's lettuce) with a homemade vinaigrette, finishing up with an apple pie in the
tarte tatin
style that I loved (but still hadn't figured out how to make). The girls happily ate everything on offer after playing in the garden for hours. Marie's home was full of games and laughter—with none of the pressure (math games! spelling! music lessons!) that I'd already introduced at home. Life would soon be pressure-filled enough, Eric and Sandrine felt, given that the French school system is one of the most demanding in the world.

My resistance to “slow food,” already weakened, abruptly melted away at the beginning of May due to a near tragedy. Philippe had just returned from a work trip to Mexico. I'd been nervously awaiting his return, as the swine flu epidemic had just broken out. Mexico was the epicenter, and I was worried that he would be prevented from traveling home. My relief at his return didn't last long, however. Within a day, he had come down with a high fever and a hacking cough. He spent the next day in bed, exhausted, his cough worsening. By that evening, his fever had soared.

I had just put the girls to bed and was in the kitchen doing dishes when I heard him stumbling down the stairs. By the time I got to him, he was standing at the dining room table, breathing rapidly and shaking so hard that I thought he would fall down. In full seizure, his arms literally jerked up and down, his body jolted back and forth, and his teeth and lips chattered uncontrollably.

My husband is going to die
, I remember thinking. Somehow I made my way over to the telephone. My mother-in-law had posted the most important emergency numbers on the phone when we moved in. I breathed a little thank you, and dialed the number for the nearest hospital—nearly three-quarters of an hour away. By now, my heart was beating so quickly that I found it hard to think straight. I could barely think of what to say to the operator.

“My husband has a fever, he's having a seizure, and I think he needs to go to hospital,” I managed to croak out. There was an agonizing moment of silence.

“We don't send ambulances that far out,” came the reply. “You'll have to bring him in yourself.” Stunned, I didn't know what to say. I remember politely thanking the operator and slowly putting the phone down. Philippe, still standing behind me, had gone deathly pale. He was shaking as badly as before. I felt paralyzed. I was alone with the girls.
Should I wake them up and drive the four of us to the hospital? What if Philippe had swine flu? What if they got it? What if I got it? Who would take care of them?
I quickly called my mother-in-law. She promised to come right over, but she was at a friend's house, more than half an hour away. I hung up, wondering how I would get Philippe down to the car. If he collapsed, I didn't know if I could carry him. A minute later, Janine called me back.