Some thoughts on French parenting and the French approach to food education in the NY Times Motherlode blog today.
Why I don`t parent like the French, with one exception
13 Friday Apr 2012
Posted in kid's food
13 Friday Apr 2012
Posted in kid's food
Some thoughts on French parenting and the French approach to food education in the NY Times Motherlode blog today.
I’m sorry if I disappoint you but French parents mostly do NOT feed their kids the way you are describing them. Most schools now offer too frequently fried food and ketchup during lunch, allow candies full of sugar and additives to celebrate birthdays, etc, and even if the menu looks good, kids do not eat what they are served.
), but I’m a scholar, I have education, I partly work from my home, I have an easy access to local farm food. And, ironically, I’ve lived in the US and learned a lot about nutrition there (true! there is much more info and transparency on that subject than what we used to get access to in France) etc.
Do you know that, for ex, at my kids (private) school, kids do not eat yogurts that contain pieces of fruit anymore? They only eat yogurt that are totally smooth, not a piece of fruit allowed… Because that is what they want, what they eat at home! Not at all the home made preserve in a homemade yogurt I used to serve my kids!
The adults are stunned, horrified, but they had to change the offer, follow the kids desires, because otherwise carts of food are trashed at the end of school lunch…
Kids know they’ll find soda drinks + brioche (industrial) + nutella at their houses after school and don’t even bother to eat lunch at school anymore, although parents pay for it…
Please don’t take what you’ve witnessed in Paris and/or in your educated friends houses as a norm. It is NOT. It has been, I’ve been raised that way. It still is, I feed my kids that way and so do many of my friends (that’s a reason to be friends
French people are almost getting poorer by the minute, and so does their food quality… + Europe is slowly but firmly setting lower standards for industrial food than those we in France had legalized. We who do not accept that shout out loudly about the need to maintain our not so ancient ways of eating and yeaching kids to eat, but it’s not sure we’ll win…
Bottom line, it’s not true that there is such a thing as French parents as you describe them. Those are parents, period. OK, influenced by the fantastic food we can get our hands on here, our traditions etc. But I’m absolutely sure there are parents in the US, in India, in Spain etc. who are just the same.