French School Lunches

[Aleria]

I always packed a lunch from home as a child, but I read a blog about a teacher who ate school lunches (In the USA) for a year. Today she has a guest post from someone in France, talking about their school lunches, and I find the difference amazing! Here's the link

It even has a calendar of lunches for the month of March en Francais which make me jealous! I'd eat that happily (I can translate some of them if you're interested, I know a fair bit of French)

[Graham]

That sounds so wonderful - I wonder what it costs? It sounds like eating plat du jour in a nice restaurant every day. My memory of school meals in the UK was of far duller food than this. If this sets French kids up for a lifetime of healthy eating, it is money well spent, an enviably far-sighted approach.

I'm struck by the luxury of time spent over the mid-day meal. I wish we had that same respect for our own digestions, for our animal satisfactions, as the French allow themselves. Are we so afraid of wasting time? Is it economic efficiency that drives us? Fear of competitors in the Far East who will out-produce us if we take long lunches? Or are we still stuck in the Puritanical "Food is only for fuel, not pleasure" frame of mind? Can we get off this self-denying treadmill? Perhaps we pass this way but once, each meal-time is an opportunity for pleasure, what a shame if we miss the chance.

[wosnes]

I've seen other examples of school lunches in France, and, in fact, posted some here previously. The thing that most amazes me isn't what they eat for lunch, but that many American children would turn up their collective noses at lentils or grated beets! American children are dumbed down in terms of variety in foods.

[wosnes]

That sounds so wonderful - I wonder what it costs? It sounds like eating plat du jour in a nice restaurant every day. My memory of school meals in the UK was of far duller food than this. If this sets French kids up for a lifetime of healthy eating, it is money well spent, an enviably far-sighted approach.

As I mentioned, I've read some other articles about this and the meals are quite affordable. I've also read that when the parents get the menu, they are also given suggestions of what to serve at dinner to make a balanced menu for the day.

[sheepish]

I did an school exchange years ago with a French school and this was what stunned me the most. All of us English kids were absolutely flabbergasted to be sat down at a proper table with proper cutlery, multiple courses, etc, etc.

There was a table, ages ago, published in the British press of how much European countries spent on school lunches and France was easily at the top with Britain right at the bottom. Having sampled a French school lunch, that suprises me not at all. (And I went to a private school in the UK where the lunches weren't bad at all. The main difference in France was to do with the ritual element of it - no gulping down your food in ten minutes to go off and do something else with your break..

[~reneew]

Very interesting!

[wosnes]

There's something to be said for the enjoyment of good food being an important part of daily life.

[Nicest of the Damned]

Are we so afraid of wasting time? Is it economic efficiency that drives us? Fear of competitors in the Far East who will out-produce us if we take long lunches? Or are we still stuck in the Puritanical "Food is only for fuel, not pleasure" frame of mind? Can we get off this self-denying treadmill?

I recently read a survey from 2006 that said that, while Americans are eating more now than we did in 1989, we're enjoying it less:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/309/eating- ... oying-less

The "food is for fuel, not for pleasure" approach doesn't seem very effective in curbing obesity. 32% of Americans are obese now, compared to 23% circa 1989.

Of course, puritanical types are often not dissuaded by reality refusing to cooperate with their ideas.

[wosnes]

I wish we had that same respect for our own digestions, for our animal satisfactions, as the French allow themselves. Are we so afraid of wasting time? Is it economic efficiency that drives us? Fear of competitors in the Far East who will out-produce us if we take long lunches? Or are we still stuck in the Puritanical "Food is only for fuel, not pleasure" frame of mind? Can we get off this self-denying treadmill?

I think it's a combination of things. Part of it is that we don't make the preparation and enjoyment of food a priority. That alone may be one of the reasons the French and Italians eat dinner so much later than we do. Even if you work, that's a priority.

Actually, you may have hit the nail on the head with "animal satisfactions." I know a lot of people who think the sensuality of anything is a little wicked.

What follows is from Chic & Slim by Anne Barone. It preceded French Women Don't Get Fat:

Blame it on the Puritans. If you wonder why the French, the most food-obsessed people on the planet, can eat all that cream, butter, and egg yolks and struggle far less with excess weight than Americans who dutifully take home shopping bags of sugarless and fat-free, the answer is: the Puritans. The French never had any; the Americans did. The French had Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles de Gaulle, and Brigitte Bardot.

But no Puritans.

Back in 1620 when the Puritans stepped of the Mayflower, they brought with them the intellectual baggage that if something feels good and makes us happy, it is bad. Discomfort and sacrifice are good. The more uncomfortable and unpleasurable something is, the Puritans thought, the better for you. Of course this Puritan philosophy grew out of strong religious conviction.

The French were also religious -- in their own fashion. When they wanted to give thanks to God, they built -- by hand, no less -- huge, architecturally magnificent Gothic cathedrals. The construction of Chartres, no doubt, burned more calories than all the Jane Fonda workout videos ever sold.

For Thanksgiving, the American Puritans fixed a big dinner and ate it. Our annual reenactment of this feast kicks off that part of the year when the average American gains six pounds.

The Puritan legacy was still strong three centuries later when I was growing up in the 1950s. In that small Bible Belt town, drinking alcohol was a sin, smoking was a sin, playing cards was sin, dancing was a sin, and going to the movies was a sin. Any effort to improve your appearance was viewed with suspicion. Once I arrived at a friend's house to find her grandmother in a rage. Pointing a damning finger, she demanded, "What do you think about a girl who would go against the will of God?" My friend, it turned out, had straightened her naturally curly hair.

In that Bible Belt milieu, sex outside marriage put you on the fast track to Hell. As for sex in marriage, you weren't supposed to enjoy it. The only sanctioned pleasurable activity was eating. I have witnessed church family night dinners that were food orgies that would have shocked the un-Puritanical French right out of their socks.

The French seek equal pleasure in a well-prepared meal as in a session of passionate lovemaking. Actually the French favor alternating one with the other. But everything in moderation. The French, after all, coined the phrase la douceur de vivre, the sweetness of living. Americans coined the phrase "No pain, no gain." The way this works, you go through the pain of dieting. Then you gain it all back.

THE NOUVEAUX PURITANS

In recent decades American Puritanism has undergone an evolution. Activities no longer prohibited for religious or moral reasons, are now on the no-no list as unhealthy. This has given the Puritan mentality an in-road to spoiling our previously okay pleasure in eating. The rules are simple: Anything that tastes good, like grilled steak, cheese enchiladas, fresh-brewed coffee, or Key lime pie, are poisons, guaranteed to kill us. Foods such as tofu, bean sprouts, and plain low-fat yogurt are cure-alls promised to put the medical profession out of business and make us all live to 110.

Most new products the food industry has put on the shelves recently carry some (mostly overhyped) health claim. And whatever the fad health food, they add it to everything. During the oat bran craze about the only products on the supermarket shelf without this gritty little addition was laundry detergent and disposable diapers.

These Nouveux Puritans have studies to back up their claims. But my faith in "studies" is weak. I remember one study that concluded that wearing lipstick caused cancer. However, to ingest as much lipstick as they had pumped into those poor little research mice, a human had to eat 90 tubes of lipstick per day!

Across the Atlantic the French hear the results of the American Nouveux Puritan food studies, pause a moment from eating their pate de fois gras, cut a bite of bifteck, sip their Beaujolais, and contemplate the cheese tray as they shrug and say, "Il sont fous, ces Americains." They're crazy, those Americans."

This is from Good Food Tastes Good by Carol Hart, Ph.D.

When Puritanism was banished from the bed, it fled to the table. The cliches of American food advertising and popular food writing insistently equate gustatory pleasure with sin. Rich desserts are invariably described as decadent, wicked, forbidden, or sinful. Perhaps fast foods are eaten fast almost out of shame, like a furtive visit to the whorehouse. And how many people feel self-loathing rather than satisfied pleasure, after succumbing (again, the language of sin!) to a craving for a fatty or sugary treat. One wonders whether our obsessive moralizing, anti-instinctual attitudes toward the pleasures of the palate might have spawned the very perversities (binging, eating disorders, extreme obesity) they are intended to curb.

Here's more on school lunches:

School Lunches in France: Nursery-School Gourmets