French Kids Eat Everything (29 page)

Plus, the things we bought at the supermarket didn't seem nearly as fresh as in France. Philippe swore (
putain!
) at the smell of the chicken when we unwrapped it. After a year of farm-fresh produce, I was surprised by the slightly unsavory smell, and the overly smooth, slimy skin, like something that had been wrapped in plastic way too long. Cooked, the meat was tasteless and strangely limp. Even the organic chickens had some of the same whiff about them (plus, they were so expensive). Philippe was so put off that he threatened to turn vegetarian, sparking a search for a new supplier. Eventually, we found a local butcher who brought in chickens from a Mennonite farm (their wings, plucked and primly folded, did look as if they were tucked in a little prayer). I realized that I would miss our village
marché
more than I had thought.

Even more surprising were my reactions to the food habits of people around us. I had never noticed the number of people eating while wandering through the streets. Now I found the sight oddly disconcerting. I was surprised to see the slow trickle of children emerging every lunch hour at one of our neighborhood schools to be handed a McDonald's drive-thru takeout meal by their moms (who were comfortably waiting in their idling cars). At work, I was amazed when a colleague entered the room for a midmorning meeting, opened a bag of chips, dumped them on a piece of paper on the table, and calmly announced: “This is my breakfast. Anyone want some?” Our office lunchroom, where I now reheated my homemade, two-course lunch every day, was deserted; people were hunched over their computers eating sandwiches.
Was this how it was before we left?
I wondered.
And how come I never noticed?

Sophie faced her own challenges at school. She quickly became aware that she didn't eat like the other children. Much of this had to do with snack foods. At first, I didn't want to send her to school with a snack at all, planning to feed her the afternoon
goûter
as usual. But when I picked her up after her first full day of school, she looked wan and upset. “Maman, I'm
huuungry
!” she sniffled. Puzzled, I opened her lunch box: carrot soup in a thermos, baguette and butter, yogurt, and slices of apple. Almost nothing had been touched.

“Why didn't you eat your lunch?” I asked.

“I didn't have enough time,” replied Sophie, bursting into tears.

It was true that we had been a bit surprised by the schedule that the school had sent home. They had allocated all of ten minutes for lunch, from precisely 12 noon to 12:10
P.M
. This included time for unpacking and packing up. “But
zat ees rrreedeeculous
!” my husband snapped, when I showed him the schedule (his French accent, which I still find unbearably cute, is more pronounced when he's upset).

“How can she possibly manage to eat her lunch in so short a time?” he went on. “She'll be hungry, and she won't be able to concentrate on her schoolwork!” I had a strange sense of déjà vu.

“She'll just have to eat quickly, like everyone else,” I said firmly but (I hoped) calmly.

“Humph!” snorted Philippe. “They're training them to rush while eating, and to eat bad-quality lunches at their desks when they grow up. Now I know where these terrible habits come from,” he concluded disdainfully.

I agreed with him, but (just as in France) there was not a lot we could do. I had no choice but to relent on our “no snacking” rule. So I started reluctantly sending Sophie to school with snacks. At first, I only provided raw fruit and vegetables. But as Vancouver's cold, wet winter weather arrived, I began to reconsider. Given how little Sophie ate at lunch, she needed more calories, even if she gobbled them at recess in the rain.

Reluctantly, I started sending crackers, and even cookies (having found a source for the lovely little Petit Lu biscuits that had been a favorite back in France). But Sophie came home with a different list: Fruit by the Foot, Oreos, Gummi bears. My refusal to provide these sorts of processed snacks led to fights and resentment; no matter how much I told her she needed to eat healthily, she just wanted to be like the other kids. The only problem was that some of the other kids ate doughnuts for snacks. In frustration, Philippe sat Sophie down in front of the computer and showed her pictures of children with cavities: rotting stumps that impressed Sophie (and us) with their sheer vileness. But she still pestered me for the snacks that other children had. Frustrated, I realized that by banning certain snacks, I was actually inducing cravings for the very same food in Sophie. This seemed to run counter to what I had learned in France.

It didn't help that some of the snacks I preferred to give her instead
were
different. When Sophie invited two classmates over to our house for one of her first play dates, I proudly offered up a French-style
tarte aux pommes
, served in the classic style, with apples carefully arranged in a spiral on the pastry, drizzled with a little lemon and sugar, absent the filling and pastry topping that North American pies usually have. It was greeted with puzzled looks.

“What is this? Apple pizza?” ventured one girl, with that accusatory caution that North American kids so often display around new foods. After some gentle encouragement, she delicately tasted it with the tip of her tongue. The pie, it soon became apparent, didn't pass muster.

“Can I have some Oreos instead?” Oreos had, in fact, made it into our house. I had finally succumbed to Sophie's badgering and bought a box. With great anticipation, she had tucked two cookies into her lunch bag earlier that week. They came home almost untouched after she decided that they were “too sweet.” So we had leftover Oreos to share, which the other girls munched happily before leaving the table to play.

I heaved a sigh of relief that my daughter had passed whatever strange social tests six-year-old girls devise for one another and resolved to keep “normal” snacks in the cupboard for just such purposes. And, because I didn't want Sophie to feel that she was denied foods (and thus develop cravings), I started to be more permissive about snacks. But I also encouraged her to develop preferences for relatively healthier options, like squares of dark chocolate (rather than Oreos) or juice-based “natural” gummy bears. I told her about artificial colors and flavors (so that she'd know why I refused to buy her some snacks). With some grumbling, she consented to my “healthy” choices, and I agreed she could have “sweet treats” twice a week at school: granola bars, natural fruit leather, Petit Lu chocolate cookies.

We even agreed to compromise on fast food. I carefully explained why I wouldn't take our family to McDonald's (the fact that my first job as a teenager was a McDonald's cashier gave me some credibility, which I used for all it was worth). I'm not sure that my explanations of factory farming and “fake food” made much headway with Claire, but they certainly impressed Sophie. Instead, we agreed on an alternative fast food: sushi, which is an easy enough choice in Vancouver, with little mom-and-pop sushi restaurants on nearly every block. And I gave permission for Sophie to accept fast-food restaurant invitations from her friends, following the French principle that “it's okay to have treats once in a while.” If her friends' parents took her to McDonald's while on a play date, I simply smiled and practiced my Miss Manners rule of “if you don't have anything nice to say…” Usually, I simply (and truthfully) observed: “Sophie must have enjoyed her meal.” To Sophie, I merely said: “I liked McDonald's too when I was a child. But it's something that you grow out of.”

However, we still hadn't solved the school lunch problem. Sophie continued to come home hungry with half-eaten lunches. I pleaded and scolded, and even made special concessions (like slicing all of the crusts off her sandwiches to make them easier to chew). But it didn't make much of a difference. Sophie had been trained to eat slowly and properly. We had instilled the importance of
dégustation
in her, and now it was coming back to haunt us.

“Why don't you just
gobble
your lunch?” I found myself scolding her one afternoon. I couldn't quite believe this came out of my mouth after all the time spent teaching her how to eat mindfully.

“All of the other kids are so messy! I chew slowly, with my mouth closed!!” Sophie wailed. It was true—a year of harping on her eating behavior had paid off, and she was a lot tidier than she had been (although still sometimes a messy eater by French standards). This sometimes posed problems at school. The worst was the infamous Cupcake Episode, which Sophie still remembers. One day, she spent her carefully saved pennies on a luscious cupcake at the school's only bake sale that term. It was crowned with a thick layer of icing and topped with sprinkles. As she tearfully narrated the story to me later that afternoon, she had slowly savored the cupcake, taking little licks of the icing, until the bell rang—lunch was over. Her teacher, seeing the unfinished cupcake, told Sophie she'd “count her down,” but hearing the 5 … 4 .... 3 … made Sophie so nervous that she choked, and dropped her beloved cupcake on the floor. It finished in the garbage, and Sophie mourned the lost treat as only a young child can. But she soon learned to gobble her food if need be (although she regularly told us she missed the
cantine
in France, and still managed to “slow food” her breakfasts and dinners at home).

The lost cupcake wasn't the only example of wasteful eating that we encountered. The school didn't have a cafeteria, but it had organized “hot lunches” three days per week. Children were given the option of pizza on Mondays, Subway sandwiches on Wednesdays, and sushi on Fridays. Drinks and food came in individual packaging, necessary because each child got to choose their own toppings (but they got only one choice, which they had to eat every week for four months). We couldn't believe the sheer volume of waste that was generated, particularly given the contrast with France, where everything had been reusable—napkins, tablecloths, cutlery, plates, cups, even the breadbaskets on the tables. This was a side benefit of the French approach that we hadn't thought of: in addition to requiring children to taste a wide variety of dishes and foods, the French approach to eating was much more environmentally friendly.

As the year went on, Sophie grew increasingly sensitive about our attitudes toward the food at school. But we—and Philippe, in particular—didn't hesitate to let her know what we thought. One afternoon, she came home smiling and waving a permission slip. Her class had raised the most money in the school walk-a-thon, and the reward was … a trip to McDonald's. Grumbling, Philippe signed the form, but crossed out the “Happy” in “Happy Meal,” scrawling
Happy but not Healthy
across the form in large indignant letters.

Claire, meanwhile, was rediscovering the pleasures of snacking. She tucked into the morning and afternoon snacks (up to three servings!) at her new day care with obvious delight. Soon, she began refusing to eat breakfast, passing up my lovingly prepared oatmeal and fresh fruit because she knew that she could eat the early morning snack that would be waiting upon her arrival at day care. And large snacks were often served at 5:00
P.M
., right before we picked her up. Claire would fill up and then toy with her food at dinner. I was frustrated, to say the least. But I realized that I wasn't the only one who felt this way after I tried mentioning snacking to a few other parents. So at our next parents' meeting, we politely proposed a solution: only fresh fruit was to be served at afternoon snack, and no snacking after 4:00
P.M
. The day care staff was happy to oblige. A large, attractive basket was placed at the entrance next to the sign-in sheet, and parents were encouraged to bring “fresh fruit to share.” Claire proudly brought in strawberries, cantaloupe, and even a watermelon.

Lunch was a more difficult challenge. The staff started cooking one hot lunch for children every month. And parents began returning the favor and making meals for the staff (my favorite contribution is homemade apple-rhubarb crumble). But apart from that one day a month, Claire's lunch often came home unfinished. Health regulations (predicated on a fear of food poisoning) prevented staff at our day care from heating up the food brought from home. Hot food could be sent in a thermos, but it would sit for hours before being served—hardly an appetizing option. We were reduced to cold foods, but our choices were limited as the girls weren't used to eating cold foods at lunchtime. They didn't like sandwiches (Claire still won't eat them). And I didn't want to serve them what the other kids seemed to be getting: juice, crackers, and fruit were popular, but hardly a substantial lunch.

Was I the only parent that felt this way?
I started striking up casual conversations with other parents at drop-off and pick-up. But I did so warily. The topic of family food choices, as I found out, is very sensitive. In a culture that associates food with guilt rather than pleasure and focuses on the consequences rather than the experience of eating, people are very ready to take offense. I didn't want anyone to think that I was passing judgment.

My first allies were moms from places like Iran, Italy, China, Brazil, and Spain. They also had traditional food cultures in which lunch was an important meal. From chatting with them, I realized that I wasn't the only parent who despaired at my kids filling up on snacks, eating little at breakfast and less at lunch. In fact, nearly every parent I spoke to who was not from North America felt the same way. We compared notes and found that our kids were having three snacks a day: morning, afternoon, and at pick-up. And most of our kids' food consumption (at least in terms of calories) happened at snacktime rather than mealtime.