French Kids Eat Everything

How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules

By: Karen Le Billon

Narrated by: Cris Dukehart

When she moved her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon expected some cultural adjustment. But she didn't expect to be lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack, or to be forbidden from packing her older daughter a school lunch. Karen is intrigued by the fact that French children happily eat everything - from beets to broccoli, from salad to spinach - while French obesity rates are a fraction of what they are in North America. Karen soon begins to see the wisdom in the "food rules" that the French use to foster healthy eating habits and good manners in babies and children. Some of the rules call into question both our eating habits and our parenting styles. Other rules evoke commonsense habits that we used to share but have somehow forgotten.

Combining personal anecdotes with practical tips and appetizing recipes, French Kids Eat Everything is a humorous, provocative look at families, food, and children that is filled with inspiration and advice that every parent can use.

©2012 Karen Bakker Le Billon (P)2014 Tantor

LOVE!!

This is hands down the only audiobook I listen to over and over again! Each time I catch new nuggets of advice. Though our lives don’t parallel in the slightest outside of being an American myself, this book is relatable, humbling, funny, and empathic. My kiddo follows this (for the most part) and all I hear is how surprised they are with how well they eat in comparison to their peers... now if we could work on the state school systems to model the French way of eating ....

Great book, Want More

This is a great book, but it left me with questions. I understand the food rules according to the French and if you don’t force vegetables for example, and dessert isn’t a reward, how do you handle dessert when kids don’t eat their veggies. Overall good content, and applicable rules.

My daughter is already eating better

My 2.5 year old started eating better after only 3 days of trying the food rules. We still have a way to go but she is now eating things like quinoa, broccoli, kale, carrots, sweet potatoes, and steak without struggle. Slowly introducing more foods. I'm not sure where I got off track as she ate everything as a baby, but this book really helps you get back on track.

Very interesting concept- French eating outside of France

I thought the story very interesting, mostly the ending where they attempted to bring the French eating customs into the North American eating culture. Interesting way of adapting to the styles here and there.
The one thing is that the narrator's voice had a very strange accent on the French passages, almost like Indian accented English instead of French accented English. Not awful but definitely took me out of the story a bit.

Informative

I have a 9-month-old and was interested in learning about how to introduce food to kids, especially in infancy. This book does an excellent job of describing struggles and triumphs when introducing kids to new foods. I learned so much!