French Kids Eat Everything Quotes

“French parents are provided with very different information about food, and about children's eating habits, than American parents. This is because French doctors, teachers, nutritionists, and scientists, view the relationship between children, food and parenting very differently than do North Americans. They assume, for example, that all children will learn to like vegetables. And they have carefully studied strategies for getting them to do so. French psychologists and nutritionists have systematically assessed the average number of times children will have to taste new foods before they willingly agree to eat them: the average is seven, but most parenting books recommend between ten and fifteen.”
― Karen le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“Cooking can be an act of love and delight, or it can be yet another exercise in racing through life on automatic pilot—never stopping for a moment to notice, feel, or taste. Cooking performed as an act of love brings us renewed energy and vigor.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“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.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“Only the middle class and the wealthy have access to good food and eat well. No one else! In France, everyone eats well—good food is for everyone, no matter rich or poor.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“Opposition to food can’t persist if there is no opponent. In the face of a child’s refusal to eat, the best parental response is serene indifference. Parents should remind themselves: ‘I know this will pass. My child will not continue refusing to eat if I simply refuse to react.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“Listening to Philippe’s family talking to my daughters, I began to learn the endearments that the French reserve for small children. Many of them revolve around food. Janine’s favorite was ma cocotte (mon coco for boys), literally, “my little chick.” Much to his discomfort, she still occasionally called my husband mon petit chou (my little cabbage). I soon learned some of my own endearments and would tease Philippe by calling him mon trognon de pomme (my apple core).”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything

“Someone once told me that cross-cultural analysis is even more painful than psychoanalysis. At the time, I didn't understand what she meant. But now I thought I did. When you are living in a different culture, you spend a lot of time second-guessing yourself. Every interaction with people around you is an opportunity for misunderstandings, faux pas, unintended offenses, and general feelings of sticking out like a sore thumb.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything

“Some things should be so routine that they don’t even ask questions! Especially about eating!” I shrugged it off at the time, but I later began to wonder. Maybe Janine was right. I had encouraged my children to express their individual views, and to use their questions to dispute parental orders, allowing them to exert control where they could. One of the places where they did this, early on, was at the table. Meals at our house were usually rushed, as we were either herding the children out the door in the morning or rushed getting home after work. Hurried and harried, I’d usually accept the kids’ rejections of my cooking and meet their demands for substitutes. Bread and butter, or pasta, became our routine. My kids learned that they—not I—decided what to eat.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“Food Rule #4: Food is social. Eat family meals together at the table, with no distractions. This rule seems to turn North”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“A good wine smells and even tastes like its terroir, the landscape where it was born. And people are the same: where we come from is always part of who we are.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“From the French perspective, this was not attachment parenting. This was indulgent parenting. Traditionally, the French believe that children who have not yet reached the age of reason (l’âge de la raison, which the French believe occurs at the age of seven) shouldn’t be allowed to decide about many things, most certainly not what and how they eat.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“French parents think about healthy eating habits the way North American parents think about toilet training, or reading. If your children consistently refused to read, or even learn the alphabet, would you give up trying to teach them? Would you be content to wait for your children to toilet train by themselves, assuming that they’d eventually “grow out of it” or “figure it out”?”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

“And even if the “sneaky” method had worked, it made me wonder: Would my kids keep putting cauliflower puree in their brownies after they had left home? I didn’t think so.”
― Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters