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How the French eat (pt. 3)
A highly subjective (and probably largely inaccurate) outsider's guide to how France views their food — and the food of others
Having written three articles about the kinds of things French people eat everyday, I thought I’d write this time about how they view food more broadly — from their attitude towards food to their attitude towards non-French food to the role that government should play in how people eat. Bon app !
Attitude towards food
In my experience, about 30% of French conversations revolve around food and drink. I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve heard where people spent hours talking about certain dishes, restaurants or beverages. If you were to talk about such things at length in English, people would assume you were a pretentious foodie or a bit obsessive, but in France, it appears perfectly acceptable to spend most of a lunchtime talking about what you had for lunch the previous day.
What I find interesting is that French people are stereotyped as being philosophical. When people imagine a Frenchman, they often imagine a guy sitting at a cafe table drinking red wine and smoking a cigarette. But having lived in France on-and-off for over two years, I don’t find French people particularly…
