French Mums! Baby weaning the French way?

[FancyPants35]

I recently heard through another mum about French style baby weaning - as in, the way French babies are weaned. She said that they put a tiny bit of purée in the milk and mix it to give the baby a slight taste of a vegetable, and then gradually up the amount until the baby is basically drinking soup! This is practical because French mums do tend not to breast feed as long as UK mums, so by 6 months they are usually bottle feeding. She said they then move to purée of the same veg, and finally solids. And only then progress onto the next flavour.

I know from experience that French children don't seem to be fussy eaters and this peaked my interest. Unfortunately I didn't know the mum (had just met her on an online class) so didn't get to ask more.

Are there any French women on here, or women who live in France, who can explain more about the French baby weaning system?

Lol i don’t think the lack of fussiness is anything to do with weaning methods, and everything to do with not being given a choice! Plus french children are offered follow on milk / lait de croissance for a lot longer than in the UK. Plus it’s considered very normal to eat vegetables and salad as a matter of course, children don’t have to be fooled or bribed into doing so and it’s not optional.

M’y youngest is still at primaire. His school lunch menu today is

Leeks in vinaigrette
Cheese omelette
Boulgour wheat mixed with courgettes, cheese on top (gratin)
Fruit
Yoghurt
Bread
Water to drink.

That’s it for the whole school, from age 3 to 10 (maternelle / nursery get the same menu). No choices. Packed lunches not allowed. They are not necessarily expected to clear plates, but must try everything.

That’s why French kids are not, on the whole, fussy.

Can absolutely agree with the PP experience of school food in France. I taught there for a while and was stunned at the variety of things the children had. Artichoke hearts was something I’d never had myself and there they were chomping down at 5 and 6. They are given incredible choices when I compare it to the food I’ve experienced in UK schools

I think that's a brilliant way to feed children at nursery and school. I'd imagine you'd have mums screaming about their poor kids human rights being infringed if the kids weren't given a choice of meals at school in the UK.

Tomorrow’s menu

Iceberg lettuce with shallot vinaigrette
Roast pork with mushroom sauce (non meat option of boiled eggs in a creamy sauce)
Brussels sprouts amd potatoes
Fruit
Cheese (anything from Camembert to comte to goats)
Bread

Packed lunches are only allowed when a drs note is provided (allergies etc).

Spent my maternity leave with my 1st in France, there was no mention of mixing puréed veg in with milk but I did wean her at 4 & half months after I took her for check up & doctor was adamant I should have already started - I also dropped the dummy on the floor whilst there & she just picked it up, rinsed it & offered it to dd so I said oh don't worry I've got a sterilised one in my bag & she said oh your not still sterilising are you!
Very different to uk! But my dd has gone from eating everything & everything to nothing but toast so who knows.
I also experienced half my school life in France,half in UK & agree that french kids eat anything, very different/healthy meal options in french schools.

DS goes to a French nursery - he has a four course lunch every day. Normally soup/salad, a main course (often veggie, they have meat once a week, cheese/yoghurt and fruit. That seems fairly standard from talking to the other parents. That said, I was amazed when I was in a couple of French supermarkets over the summer as to how much crap baby food was available particularly stuff that they don't really need like baby porridge.

Though to be fair OP maybe the veg-purée-in-milk approach helps to prime children here to accept veg and salad tastes more easily as they are weaned. But personally, my impression is that french parents are quite strict and simply don’t give a choice and they wholeheartedly expect their children to happily eat veg and salad. It’s cultural as much as it is a method - and I think you’d need both.

And tbh french low breastfeeding rates are not something to aspire to or facilitate.

My cousin is married to a French man. I remember her baby's very first solid food was lightly sauteed green beans sprinkled with parmesan. He wolfed it down. Afterwards there was just zero pandering to any hint of fussiness at the dinner table.

Yes I was aware of the school menus and variety of fresh food, having spent time there in school as a teen. I agree with this approach. It all looks delicious! I'm an incredibly healthy eater at home - we only have fresh organic produce with a few healthy cupboard staples but nothing processed and no junk - and don't see myself deviating from that approach for my child eg I won't be buying him processed snacks or anything, unless for special occasion such as Xmas Day. My interest was more about the actual weaning stage and how it differs from the Uk, and whether this in turn supports the child's openness to different foods.

To be clear @miimblemomble I wasn't advocating stopping breast feeding. I myself was unable to breast feed due to problems I had. A source of huge sadness at the time.

Well I'm married to a French man and his genes or parenting haven't magically turned our son into a good eater, perhaps I've fucked it all up by being English! DS (3) is fussy and refuses to eat much of what DH offers (DH is the cook in our house). He was breastfed until he was 2, and has been going to nursery (eating whatever food they provide) since he was 8 months. No idea if those two factors have anything to do with it.

I do know plenty of French children who are fussy eaters, so i don't think it's universal that they all eat well.

I have no direct experience of what kids are fed at school in France, but I would comment that the baby food sections of French supermarkets seem to be filled with many things that contain chocolate, also lots of "powders/cereals" to mix with milk in a bottle. Again, these seem to be predominantly chocolate based.

When my daughter was a new mum and very focused on being organic and healthy, it made shopping for the grandchildren quite tricky!

@FancyPants35

That was insensitive of me to mention the breastfeeding: my apologies.

It sounds like you’d be well equipped to implement a french way of weaning.

You get a similar effect in many children who attend FT nursery from an early age in the UK though. My DS ate anything he was given at nursery. Pretty much all the kids did. The serving a single meal, all together and encouraging them to try everything approach meant he’d eat all sorts. The menu was not quite as varied as the French school ones, but it’s the same idea. It’s the culture, the situation, the fact all your peers are doing it etc.

I remember he’d come home and at 2 or 3 would try to explain that he only ate peas at nursery, as if I’d decide that was OK. 😂

It’s definitely less about weaning than a whole set of practices and food culture.

@miimblemomble thank you, no problems.

I would think that drinking a soup of pureed vegetables with milk from a bottle would be a choking/aspiration risk, TBH. But I did find a bit of formula a useful thinner for making purees when DS2 started with them.

I do think that the French children's acceptance of vegetables, much like the British child's aversion to them, is largely cultural. And yes there are definitely fussy French kids! Unfortunately having been taken in by the whole "BLW makes them unfussy" myth with DS1 I am massively sceptical of any weaning method claim to magically make children unfussy. I think it is social. We/nursery/school expect children to be fussy about vegetables. Cartoons, books, other children, other parents, even us unconsciously, reinforce this, either explicitly by presenting other foods/commenting about how vegetables are yucky or children don't like them, or even just being less enthusiastic about them then other foods, or implicitly when we dress vegetables up as something special to be endured/made exciting/seen as "healthy", rather than just presenting them as ordinary food. I've never seen the "5 a day" recommendation outside of the UK - the concept that this would be a challenge/unusual would be seen as very odd here.

I don't live in France BTW but in Germany - I'd say it's somewhere in between. There's still somewhat a perception that children won't love veg, but there isn't as much beige breadcrumbed overload here, and they get served everything - DS2 was eating pea . The German approach to weaning is hilariously German BTW - you get presented with a timetable when you leave hospital about when and in which order to introduce various foods and then in which order to replace them with proper meals (and of course which proper meal that should be!) The very first taste babies get? Meat and potatoes of course :o

Some nurseries are really great and have trained their staff about how to avoid this kind of thing which is probably behind the whole "nursery magic" that makes them sleep and eat pea stew

I live in France and have a 1 yr old and I was totally horrified by the idea of mixing soup with milk in bottle. Or baby rice/cereal. It sounds absolutely disgusting. I just refused to entertain the idea of putting anything in a bottle except milk or water. I did follow the starting weaning early thing more or less though because there’s some suggestion it might help prevent allergies. But I just started with purées and made it clear to my French husband that our baby was never ever to be given anything in a bottle except milk or water. I do like the French idea that babyfood should be whatever meal adults would eat, without the salt, and with the texture adapted as needed (so pureed to start with). The French are so awful about breastfeeding past the newborn stage (I’m still feeding my 14month old) that I’ve stopped being polite about things that are normal here that I don’t want to do with my baby. The French have a lot of rules about which foods should be introduced when, and none of it is consistent between different regional health boards. I basically look at French and British weaning guidelines and where they match I assume it’s important and where they don’t match I assume it doesn’t matter. So the French say babies shouldn’t have lentils or chickpeas before 12months, British guidelines say 6months, so I figure the 12month thing doesn’t matter. British guidelines say to start weaning at 6months, French at 4 months, so I figure anything between 4and 6 months must be fine. Both French and British guidelines say no cows milk as a main drink before 12months so I figure that must be important.

For some reason this thread has reminded me of the French Nutella riots
www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-42826028

@Babyiskickingmyribs Both French and British guidelines say no cows milk as a main drink before 12months so I figure that must be important.
I find these guidelines quite contradictory as I thought formula was made from cows milk? I assumed that's why it's so dense/heavy etc as it's function is for fattening calves not humans?

My DDs went to school in France and the lunches were amazing. The contrast with the prison tray with everything slopped onto it, that they had in their British primary was vast.

Babyiskickingmyribs
I do similar with the English and Italian guidelines with my baby - sometimes they seem to say the opposite of each other though which is annoying!

I think its largely cultural expectation too, rather than the specific method.

Yes I agree about the cultural thing ie with vegetables. I notice when some people (grandparents) say things like "make sure you eat your vegetables, before the baby had even showed any sign of not eating their vegetables. It's putting the idea in their head that vegetables are not always eaten by some people! It reminds me of the sleeping in their own bed thing. When I was choosing a cot, a friend of mine once warned me that I might have a baby who simply would only sleep in my bed. Well I have never introduced my baby to the idea of sleeping in my bed, and so my baby has never known any different! Perhaps that's an unfair comparison, but hopefully it is about normality and expectations.

I haven't found the eating thing as easy! I love vegetables and certainly no "they are a chore to eat" thinking. I've always given a beautiful colourful selection with every meal and my son has eaten carrot once and brocolli once. Never repeated. It's so frustrating 🙄

[quote B1rthis]@Babyiskickingmyribs Both French and British guidelines say no cows milk as a main drink before 12months so I figure that must be important.
I find these guidelines quite contradictory as I thought formula was made from cows milk? I assumed that's why it's so dense/heavy etc as it's function is for fattening calves not humans?[/quote]
The point of this recommendation is that breast milk and formula contain the vitamins and nutrients that babies need, and you shouldn't let them drink cow's milk instead before 1, because it doesn't contain enough vitamins and nutrients for them. Obviously formula is made from cow's milk but it has added vitamins etc.

@B1rthis , of course formula is usually made from cows milk, but it’s a safe and nutritionally complete food for babies under 1. According to the NHS, whole cows milk is fine to use in cooking once you start weaning, but you can’t safely replace formula or breastmilk with whole cows milk for a baby under 12months.