French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon Page A

almost invariably discuss what the children had been eating. Parents would share their children’s food conquests in a kind of one-upmanship that North Americans usually reserve for sporting or academic achievements. Our friend Yves, for example, was incredibly proud that his nine-month-old daughter Nicole would eat Roquefort cheese (yes, the stinky green-blue moldy kind) and would excitedly offer little blobs to her in front of any and all visitors. I had to admit that Nicole did look exceedingly happy while gumming her cheese (“It’s the salt,” whispered my husband in an effort to console me).
    So I knew first-hand that French parents thought variety was important. What Madame was saying made sense. But I hadn’t known until now that the school played such an active role in educating children about food in the classroom. According to Madame, food education actually occurred through formal lessons. She gestured to a diagram on the wall that looked like a food pyramid. Edging closer, I noticed something curious. Instead of the regular food groups, there were nine recommendations, like rungs in a ladder. The food groups were there (fruits and vegetables; milk products; grains and legumes; and meat, fish, and eggs), but there were also recommendations, Madame explained, about limiting fats, sugar, and salt. The bottom row—the base of the pyramid—was devoted to drinking water. Was this a food group according to the French? I wondered.
    But before I had time to ask, Madame had moved on to talk about her personal favorite: the lessons organized during “La Semaine du Goût” (Tasting Week), held every October in schools across France. Throughout the week, celebrity chefs (from top restaurants like the Ritz) visited classrooms charming young children as they cooked and tasted foods together. The online videos of their performances sometimes became national news stories. More humbly, local cooks, bakers, butchers, cheese makers, and assorted food lovers of all types visited classrooms and campuses, offering teachable moments like “Authentic Fruit Juice Workshops.” Over 5,000 of these lessons had been organized across France the previous year. (Simultaneously, restaurants all over France offer special “Tasting Week” menus at affordable prices.) In spite of myself, I felt a skeptical look come to my face; I doubted that any gourmet chef, no matter how good, could convince Sophie to eat things she didn’t want to eat.
    But teaching kids about food didn’t stop there, Madame continued. Great care was taken in teaching children how to eat well and wisely, and in “awakening their taste-buds,” as she poetically put it. The school followed the teaching method developed by the national French Institute of Taste (no, I am not making this up). Each year, teachers began with simple lessons on the senses that encouraged children to develop skills of introspection and verbalization. Through exploring how food experiences are composed of taste, vision, smell, touch, and hearing, children learn to explore food through their five senses. This “taste training,” as it is commonly known in France, is based on lots of fun games. A favorite teaching tactic for Sophie’s age group is the sac fourre-tout . Children take turns reaching into a small hole in this “stuff sack” (which is filled with fresh vegetables and fruit), handling and describing what they find, before seeing its contents. In another lesson, children are given trays with many small pieces of different foods and asked to classify them into categories like salty, sweet, acidic, and bitter. Later on, they’re blindfolded and asked to taste, describe, and identify a piece of food they are offered. The goal is to encourage children to develop a sensory appreciation of food, using all five senses. That, I admitted, sounded like something Sophie might like.
    Madame looked encouraged. She