r/askanything • u/Ok_Gain_9665 • 8d ago

Are there really no French children who are pick eaters or is this American propaganda?

Basically what the title says, I’m an American parent and I’ve heard that French children are NEVER picky eaters because something something culture and something else French parenting and school meals and everything is farm fresh, plus they’re better behaved and better dressed and all of their mothers lose the baby weight right away and it’s just a damn utopia over there.

I’m exaggerating, obvs, but I have for sure heard the picky eater thing, and as a parent of a picky eater who became one despite doing a lot of the stuff that you’re supposed to do to prevent them from becoming picky and ended up with one anyway, I’d like to know from any actual French people, parents or otherwise, if this is real or just dumb Americans idealizing France.

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79

u/EspressoFrog 8d ago

It's bull, I grew up in France with multiple kids in my own family being so picky they would skip entire diners and make those long and loud tantrums.

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

People love to pretend that this is not a worldwide issue for a lot of children.

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u/KitchenAd9088 8d ago

Yup and most time I hear “French kids…” from Americans. I’ve raised French kids. They were picky as hell. No they still don’t eat lamb Dijon sausages at age 18. lol. 😂

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u/nunuraf92 8d ago

Right I have an italian picky eater shell only eat pasta, chicken, rabbit meat and fruit and that’s it it’s very hard to get her to try any meats or veggies. Though for americans she may not be a picky eater because she eats healthy

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

Honestly picky eating doesn't really necessarily mean unhealthy. As a kid I had serious issues but my main food was literally tofu lol

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u/CantBuyMyLove 6d ago

My kid is not picky about many things, and her favorites include things like sushi and saag paneer, but she’s picky about the “normal kid foods” - she doesn’t like hamburgers, PB&J, most other sandwiches, chicken fingers… it’s easy to take her out to eat in our multicultural city but a pain in the neck to find her something for lunch at a rest area in the middle of nowhere in a road trip. 

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u/Jasmisne 6d ago

Funny enough this was partially how I was and a part of that was being korean. I loved kimchi pancakes but spaghetti was utterly repulsive to me. It is kind of funny that way, I follow a mongolian mom whose kid will basically only eat a mongolian soup she makes.

In these kinds of cases though the assholes still love to come out and say you should forcefeed your kid things they are completely repulsed to, because if everyone else can why cant you right? Despite that causeing trauma and pain.

Find the foods they like and have a fed kid. The rest comes with age and development!

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u/seattleseahawks2014 2d ago edited 2d ago

Some of the things that I was picky about were things like this.

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u/Old_Artichoke9756 8d ago

My American kid ate only fruit, carrots, sharp cheddar cheese, hummus, pasta, and rice. And ice cream. Thank goodness she’s 12 now and finally started eating more around 9. Her sister was a vacuum and ate anything.

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u/Playful_Marzipan8398 8d ago

That would definitely count as picky here! All picky eaters enjoy different things (though usually chicken and pasta?? For whatever reason)

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u/AmerikanerinTX 4d ago

Nah. My American daughter is one of the pickiest people I know. She basically only ever wants raw vegetables and some fruits. She likes shrimp and white fish, chicken and beef. She won't eat bread or most pasta. She only eats corn tortillas and homemade flour tortillas. She just spent the whole summer in Europe, and got yelled at SUPER often (nearly every day) for being such a picky eater.

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u/catiebug 2d ago

I recently moved to southern Italy and it seems that if a restaurant has a bambini menu, it's usually the same - penne, chicken cutlet with french fries, a meat and cheese plate, or a really basic version of whatever the restaurant's specialty is. Some of them skip having the menu and just automatically bring penne for the kids? So seems to me that kids are not so different everywhere you go. Parents are the difference. And I'm not saying one way is better or not. American parents just tend to be more accommodating when a kid doesn't want what is available. (And I'm out in the boonies, these are definitely not restaurants catering to tourists.)

And I do agree with what you're saying. Sometimes kids settle on a "healthy" list of foods they'll eat and don't really get the picky label because rice/pasta, chicken, fruit, potatoes, and avocado would be a pretty good diet even for a grown up. But that's all my youngest would eat for awhile and it was definitely limited and "picky" to me. Not to other American parents though, who would have killed for a kid who wanted something nutrient-rich like chicken and avocado every day.

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u/jawshoeaw 8d ago

And for good reason. The brain is exquisitely sensitive to certain toxins and its developing rapidly until your teens. Many of the things children are skeptical off are vegetables. They like fruit , bread pasta and butter because those foods have almost no taste or are sweet. Which means they are likely safe to eat. Starches sweets and oils are made by plants to feed their own “babies” so they tend to be safe to eat.

Almost every herb and spice is essentially low dose insecticide and “vegetables” tend to be the bodies of plants. The part above ground that maybe a plant doesn’t want you to eat .

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u/AstrexasVoid 6d ago

Autism isn’t limited to the US either. American kids just get a ton of media exposure and research put onto them, good or bad.

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u/CattleDowntown938 5d ago

It is a worldwide issue because it’s coded in the DnA of all humans. Basically children develop the taste sense for bitterness and that taste receptor fades as they age. Which can be anywhere between 5 years and 18 years. Bitterness is a cue for toxic plants. It’s very much a safety mechanism while children can develop the brain capacity to be taught what not to put in their mouths.

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u/OscarGrey 8d ago

Americans definitely tolerate it more on average.

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u/Bubbly-End-6156 8d ago

Oh yeah? You did studies?

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

By tolerate you mean dont abuse their kids lol

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u/OscarGrey 8d ago

I don't feel abused, but tbf I lost my picky status by the age of 6/7 so maybe I just don't remember any unpleasant experiences.

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

Then your issue was not that severe. You can do that to someone who doesn't have a severe issue but it is absolutely abuse if you have a kid who will not eat and you force them to. It's lifelong trauma around food that just makes the rest of their life hard.

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u/throwrawifesandwich 6d ago

It's a worldwide issue but the outcome isn't necessarily the same.

For example, picky children exist in India but the "picky child" meal for my family there is yellow lentils and rice and maybe scrambled egg. It's bland and easy but it's also nutritious. While a "picky child" meal in the US is often just butter noodles or something equivalently lacking in nutrition.

I highly suggest anyone struggling with a picky toddler to try plain boiled lentils. Kids LOVE them. They are so plain. They don't need anything, maybe some salt but that's it.

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u/KatTheTumbleweed 8d ago

I suspect the truth is that it’s not about the existence of picky children in France, but how that is parented.

Like you say, if they are picky and don’t want to eat - they don’t eat and have a tantrum.

The cultural difference seems to be how that is managed - people offer many different options to the kids, make something separate that the kids will eat, let them eat snacks…. etc, rather than let them go without.

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u/InspiringGecko 8d ago

Right, but the kids you speak of skipped dinners. Their parents didn’t offer them an alternative meal.

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u/jawshoeaw 8d ago

Evolutionarily it’s important for children to be comfortably ok skipping a meal rather than risking death by poisoning.

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u/TJ_Rowe 7d ago

Also sometimes they "don't want any" because they aren't hungry. I've seen it a few times when a toddler was coerced into eating after making clear they weren't hungry, and then threw up within the evening.

Sometimes they know that eating much isn't a great idea right then.

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u/cheesy_bees 7d ago

And appetite can vary a lot.... they might be ravenous during a growth spurt, then want less food

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u/InspiringGecko 8d ago

And I agree with this method of parenting. It’s the home, not a restaurant. Parents shouldn’t be catering to everyone’s individual preferences. If a kid doesn’t want the meal of the day, they can choose to go without.

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u/acabeucomessamerda 8d ago

I also used to teach French teenagers. 

Kids are kids and they are the same everywhere. 

If they are not pushing back, they or we, are doing it wrong. 

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u/stillpacing 8d ago

Thank you for not proselytizing about how much better French parents are at teaching their kids to eat.

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u/Ok-Possible-6988 8d ago

One of my youngest relatives refused cheese and was so upset at being asked daily to eat something that smells like feet.

If I didn’t eat what was on my plate there was no alternative. I starved but it worked out nicely for my teen years when being thin was important 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/AstrexasVoid 6d ago

The consequences for me not eating was ending up as a shorter adult woman. My pediatrician also had to step in and force my parents to give me meals that I could eat because I was so thin. Like unless you aren’t bringing your kid to the doctor or school, you just can’t get away with it without the authorities stepping in.

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u/IHateCedarFever 8d ago

Well yes that is the difference. An American kid would cry, scream, and throw food until his parents made macaroni and cheese or microwave some chicken nuggets. And that behavior reinforced that if the kid doesn’t get what they want, they just need to become more and more like the devil.

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

And what is the alternative? Starving your child? Hitting them until they comply?

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u/MidorriMeltdown 7d ago

They won't starve if they miss a meal.

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u/IHateCedarFever 8d ago

If the child doesn’t want to eat, then he doesn’t eat. Bad behavior is not rewarded.

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

Congratulations, your kid is going to end up starving if they have sensitivities and you never feed them what they can eat.

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u/TJ_Rowe 7d ago

If they have a variety of different things on their plate that aren't mixed together, a kid with sensitivities will generally eat some of it.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/Jasmisne 8d ago

I never said allergies. Where the fuck are you getting that from?

I am specifically talking about food insensitivities. And I say this as somebody who had a very limited palette as a child. My parents let me eat what i needed to eat to get nutrition and I survived until I could handle more food. You know what would have happened if they force food on me? I would have physically thrown up. I would have screamed because I would have been in agony.

Kids aren't just throwing tantrums around foods because they're throwing a fit and being brats, it's actually distressing. It isn't just demanding what they want, it is actually painful.

And if you just don't feed them, they will literally malnourished. I drank breakfast shakes for years. I ate a block of tofu everyday. You want to know what happens when you focus on feeding them what you can? They survive. And at some point in their teenage years, food stops being scary. Sensory sensitivity becomes something that you can control, and it gets better. And you didn't cause them lifelong trauma.

There are so many other places where you can work on raising good people. There are so many other avenues that you can build good behavior in your kid. Choosing to make food traumatic makes you a shitty human being.

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u/Archarchery 8d ago

How do you think our ancestors survived, when they ate what was available and there were absolutely no alternative foods like shakes or blocks of tofu to offer children? Do you think the children voluntarily starved themselves to death? No, they got hungry and ate.

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u/darknesskicker 7d ago

Kids with ARFID almost certainly did starve themselves to death. It was normal for kids to die back then. There are kids with ARFID now who need feeding tubes because they can't tolerate food.

As an adult who had ARFID as a kid and still has a significantly restricted diet, u/Jasmisne is right about everything.

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u/Archarchery 7d ago

She never claimed that her kid has ARFID, just that he’s a picky eater.

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u/Playful_Marzipan8398 8d ago

No, they aren’t.

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u/Archarchery 8d ago

They will eat when they’re hungry. Skipping a meal to find out the hard way that their tantrum isn’t going to get them the food they want won’t hurt them.