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 by Karen Le Billon

This was a nice book to read after Bringing Up Bebe. Bringing Up Bebe discussed the French way of parenting, and this book (written by a different author) focuses just on the eating habits of the French and how they teach their kids to be healthy, unpicky eaters.

French kids are exposed to a lot of different fruits, vegetables, and flavors early on. They are taught to enjoy eating and to notice different tastes and textures. But the French seem to have a different perspective on what eating is and how it should be done. Eating is for pleasure, and it should be enjoyed slowly (as opposed to in the US where we feel guilty for eating dessert, and oftentimes eat on the run). Eating is also for our health, so there's a focus on fresh food (instead of processed).

Three meals plus one afternoon snack are eaten each day, so kids are not snacking all day. Then, they're actually hungry when it comes to a meal.

Even if you don't have kids, this is a great book to read. I've been trying to add some more French style to my eating - not snacking as much, and instead, having one larger and healthy snack around 4pm.

I'm also trying to get my cats to be more French about their eating. They ask for snacks pretty much all day, but I've been making them wait until meal time to eat. I don't think they like being treated like French cats.

There's also recipes at the back of the book (including purees to start introducing babies to different vegetables), and I've been making the vinaigrette this week for some salads. Tasty.