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?

@miimblemomble, I'd happily subscribe to a thread where you gave the menu (and recipes) for the children's meals!

im pretty sure thats not the standard way of weaning in France

I've never seen the "5 a day" recommendation outside of the UK
It's 7 a day in Australia, 2 fruit, 5 veg. I find 5 a day shockingly low as a target.

@Branleuse

I’ve certainly heard of people giving soupe au biberon, and I had a look on the Ameli website for the op (french national health site). It does outline the stages, and all the early ones are about gradually introducing veg and fruits blended into milk.

Needless to say I did none of this and just lied to my paediatrician ;-) neither of mine ever had a bottle of anything, both were BLW, both breastfed until just shy of their 3rd birthdays ;-) . One is totally fussy, one isn’t at all - both get on just fine eating at school or at french friends houses.

This is fascinating to me. My kids went to an organic nursery and ate mostly veggi food, lots of vegetables and things they would never touch at home.. nursery reported they consumed it, but I imagine only part of the meal.

My son was at a council-run nursery in a crappy run-down part of town. It had an on-site chef. He made things like organic beetroot and guinea-fowl purée as a matter of course, for one-year-olds and made them all birthday cakes. The staff used to go on strike whenever they threatened to cut his job. We paid about £600 a month all in at the top of the salary scale. People at the bottom end of the scale paid nothing.

You get what you fight for. Vive le socialisme

This was the creche Christmas lunch menu when my son was 13 months old.

So French

@notafanoftheman

This was the creche Christmas lunch menu when my son was 13 months old.

And a small glass of wine presumably? 😂

A glass of white with the terrine and a full-bodied red for the duck, of course! And a nice Sauternes to finish.

DS2 is in collège... his main today was canard à l’orange... tomorrow it’s pièce de Boucher (steak) with pepper sauce... it’s a world away from his cousins school lunches in Scotland!

We have that sort of thing in the evening but not twice a day. Just tend to have a sandwich or salad for lunch

@Celandines

Well that’s where the cultural bit kicks in. For most french people, lunch is the main meal of the day, and the evening meal is much lighter - soup, salad etc.

I confess we still have a proper meal in the evening, it’s a habit that is too engrained.

I prefer having the main meal in the evening with family than us having it at school/work

Again , it’s cultural. We’re getting way off the OP here but I reckon one reason why wfh has never really been embraced here is because french people are so reluctant to give up the ritual of eating a “civilised” meal at lunchtime, with their colleagues. Even school canteens have stayed resolutely open throughout Covid / high infection rates. A friend who teaches elsewhere, when their work cantine was closed to reduce COVID risk, her colleagues decided they would go en masse to a local restaurant for lunch instead and do exactly what they were prevented from doing at work ie eat a three course meal, at table, no masks, in a civilised fashion as a group! God forbid they should make do with a furtive sandwich in the street or a flask of soup at their desk ;-)

DS in primaire has a 2.5 hour lunch break, to accomodate the serving of three course meals to all the children .. it’s mental.

I guess it is relevant to the OPs post as it shows the rigidity of the cultural “cadre” that governs life in France. The U.K. is anarchy by comparison (I try to maintain a bit of that in our home life, again for reasons of cultural balance ;-))

Meh. I have 5, 2 fussy 3 not, it's just who they are. I was the only fussy one in a very large family where you ate or went hungry so i often didn't eat for long periods of time. Having said that those French school meals sound fab.

Sounds like the complete opposite of baby led weaning which is so fashionable here. The fact there are so many radically different schools of thought about weaning makes me think it’s something parents get very worried about - but it probably doesn’t matter that much which approach you go with in the end.

@kowari

I've never seen the "5 a day" recommendation outside of the UK It's 7 a day in Australia, 2 fruit, 5 veg. I find 5 a day shockingly low as a target.

It should actually be 10 a day, but the Govt advisors knew that would be seen as completely unachievable, so they set a target that hopefully some ppl would reach. Not a particularly inspiring story!

Slightly off topic but what do the French have for dinner at home? I've never quite been able to work that one out.. surely it's not the whole three courses and cheese all over again?

Trendy Parisian mums do do BLW but it’s not a big thing. And it used to be ten a day here, I remember the tv campaign.