Tasty Food
Consider a pleasure recalibration based on ‘l’éducation du gout.’
The Conversation
- Marie-Anne Suizzo
Thanks to Anna Pelzer for sharing their work on Unsplash.
One of the most common New Year’s resolutions people make is to
lose weight by dieting. The idea is that restricting the pleasures of
tasty foods will lead to greater fitness and a finer physique. But if
these rewards are so valuable, why is it so hard for us to stick to our
resolution? Maybe the problem is that when we try to lose weight, we
also lose the pleasure of eating.
What if we could have it all? Keep the pleasure and
stick to our resolution? In the US, we tend to compartmentalize
pleasure, separating it from our daily chores and relegating it to
special times. We have happy hours, not happy days. We have guilty
pleasures, as if enjoying chocolate or a favorite movie is a moral
failing.
In France, pleasure, or “plaisir,” is not a dirty word.
It’s not considered hedonistic to pursue pleasure. Perhaps a better
translation of the word is “enjoyment” or even “delight.” Pleasure, in
fact, takes the weight of a moral value, because according to the
French, pleasure serves as a compass guiding people in their actions.
And parents begin teaching their children from very early childhood in a
process called the education of taste, or “l’éducation du gout.”
Taste as a Gateway to Understanding Pleasure
The education of taste means teaching children to appreciate and
savor the wide variety of flavors in the world and to eat properly at
the table. In my eight months conducting research on French parenting
in Paris, I found that the education of taste begins very early in
families and is reinforced in daycare centers, where even two-year-olds
are served formal, yet relaxed, four-course lunches with an appetizer,
main course, cheese plate and dessert.
But taste education goes beyond cultivating your children’s palate.
It’s about awakening and stimulating all the senses as well as the mind
and emotions. On a survey listing 50 parenting practices with infants
and toddlers, 455 French mothers and fathers in my study rated what we
called “stimulating practices” as more important than responding to
basic needs and teaching manners. Stimulating practices included reading
to children, playing music and giving them massages. The ultimate goal
of stimulating children is to develop their understanding of what gives
them pleasure.
Restrictions That Actually Open up the World
The moment that tied it all together for me was when I asked a
mother in my research study why it was important to train her children
to behave properly in public. She simply replied, “Because if they know
how to behave properly, they will know how to adapt and get along with
people. And that will give them pleasure.” Adhering to social rules is a
means to greater pleasure. You have to give up something to gain
something greater.
As Americans, we are taught to deny pleasure and venerate self-sacrifice and hard work.
And when we finally take time off to have fun, we often do things in
excess. We party hard. We eat and drink too much. And then we feel
guilty. When we enjoy food too much, we say we’ve been “bad.” Maybe if
we didn’t deprive ourselves of simple pleasures all day every day, we
wouldn’t feel so compelled to overdo it on weekends.
A comparative study found that when American parents talked to
their children at the dinner table, they talked about what children should eat in nutritional and moral terms.
When the Italians talked at the table, they talked about what their
children wanted to eat, and encouraged them to develop their individual
tastes.
One of the most surprising things that French mothers shared
with me in my research was their belief that stimulating children’s appetites for a wide variety of life’s pleasures can actually deter them from becoming addicted to drugs!
Those moms may have been on to something.
At the table, with distractions minimized. Family image via www.shutterstock.com.
Focused Family Meals
According to a recent national survey
in the US by CASAColumbia, teens who have more frequent family meals
have better relationships with their parents, and are less likely to
smoke or use drugs and alcohol. Sitting around the table talking with
your teenagers at least five times a week, even for just 20 minutes, has
positive, lasting effects on their health and on family relationships.
But having regular family dinners can be a challenge. Children
and adolescents have busy afterschool schedules, and for some parents
juggling jobs, working long hours or not having a partner make it
virtually impossible to find a moment when everyone is home. But
research suggests that making even a little time to have those
conversations around the table can have big payoffs down the road.
When you do sit down at the table, leave the television and the
phones off until the meal is over. In a recent study, researchers had
two groups of families share a meal in a lab made to look like a dining
room. One group had no distractions, and the other group heard a
continuous loud noise coming from a room adjacent to theirs. The
researchers found that the distracted group consumed more cookies. The harder it was to focus on the meal, the more they were tempted to overeat.
The French idea of education of taste has much in common with
the notion of mindfulness. Both traditions focus on giving yourself over
to the moment and living it fully. If you are going to enjoy your
favorite food, really enjoy it and don’t feel guilty. Notice the
subtlety or the intensity of the flavors and savor each morsel. Lose
yourself in the pleasure. As we start a new year, if we must deprive
ourselves for a distant goal, why not at least find and enjoy the many
small pleasures along the way?
Marie-Anne Suizzo is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
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