French Food

This morning I was reading a news article about American school lunches. Because of the increase in childhood obesity, the federal government mandated new nutrition standards for school lunches, increasing whole grains, reducing fat and salt. The article says more food is being wasted because more food is being thrown away. Although the support for that statement was only anecdotal, if true it would not be surprising. What was surprising was that the typical French elementary school lunch, including baguette, butter, cheese, and fruit, would not be allowed under the new guidelines. One wonders what the purpose of the guidelines is. Ostensibly the idea is that children will learn to eat food that is good for them, to grow up healthy and trim but most children in my experience eat what their parents eat. They don't run home and tell their parents to cook whole wheat pasta and serve it with kale just because the school gives them that for lunch.

As Gary Taubes writes in his copiously researched books on nutrition, scientific data is woefully inadequate because people can't be locked up for long periods of time simply to control everything that goes in their mouths. A controlled experiment is virtually impossible. There are also numerous other variables that determine weight and health. So many food shibboleths have been upended but even the science that upends them is not from human controlled experiments. Anecdotal evidence does not count as data.

The difference between French food and American food is always brought home forcefully when my husband and I fly to Paris. On the way there we eat American airline food, nearly inedible but similar in content to school lunches here. Then if we have to fly from Paris to our end destination we usually get a small meal that is very, very good, similar to the school meal described in the news article--a small piece of grilled chicken, a lightly dressed salad or crudites, a hard roll with cheese and real butter, and often some small fruit tart. Though hardly Michelin starred food, it is simple and good.