Bonhomie … the idea of sharing is a key part of meal times in France. Photograph: Jessica Sample/Corbis
Every day a small miracle occurs without anyone paying the slightest attention. At breakfast, lunch and supper tens of millions of French people decide to gather round a table at the same time in order to share a meal, as if some invisible conductor raised his baton to mark the start of festivities. This ritual is so deep-rooted that the French find it quite usual. For foreigners, on the other hand, it is like something from outer space. "When the American sociologist David Lerner visited France in 1956 he was stunned by the inflexibility of the French regarding food," says fellow sociologist Claude Fischler, head of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research ). "He couldn't understand why they all ate at a fixed time, like at the zoo."
French eating habits are indeed very singular. "Everyday life in France is marked by three traditional meals," says Thibaut de Saint Pol, a sociologist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Cachan. "At 1pm half the population are at table and at 8.15pm this activity concerns more than a third of the population. Meals play a large part in organising social life." This major collective ritual is specific to France. A graph plotting meal times produced by Eurostat [the statistical office of the European Union] is almost flat for Sweden, Finland, Slovenia and Britain; all the way through the day people feed on various snacks, at no particular time. The same graph for France rises to three spectacular spikes, morning, noon and night.
But this is not the only unusual feature of meals in France. People here also spend more time eating than their fellow Europeans: two hours, 22 minutes a day in 2010, 13 minutes longer than in 1986! "If you add the hours of domestic labour directly related to eating – cooking, washing up and so on – this is one of the day's main activities," Saint Pol wrote in the journal Economie et Statistique in 2006. The French are also very keen on commensality [eating together]. According the Crédoc consumer studies and research institute, 80% of meals are taken with other people. "In France meals are strongly associated with good company and sharing, which is undoubtedly less so in other countries," says Loïc Bienassis, a researcher at the European Institute of Food History and Culture .
Americans take a radically different approach. There is nothing sacred about meals: everyone eats at their own speed, depending on their appetite, outside constraints and timetable. As long ago as 1937 French writer Paul Morand was surprised to see New Yorkers lunching alone, in the street, "like in a stable". US practice is so different from French ritual that it sometimes requires explanation. "There's a secondary school in Toulouse which organises exchanges with young Americans," says social anthropologist Jean-Pierre Poulain. "To avoid any misunderstandings teachers warn families before their children leave that the start of their stay will not be marked by an evening meal, as in France. When the young visitors arrive they are shown the fridge and told they can help themselves whenever they like."
The British are very keen on snacking too. Saint Pol can see no evidence of "food synchronism". According to Poulain and fellow sociologist Cyrille Laporte, food consumption is spread out over the day, resulting in a "loss of conviviality". "Many Brits eat at the wheel or with one eye on their PC, which is sacrilege for the French, who regard meals as a 'full-time' activity. In France meals are one of the best bits of the day," Saint Pol adds. In a survey of how French people spend their time the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies found that eating procures almost as much pleasure as reading or listening to music. Eating alone, at work or at home, is often seen as a trial.
Social practice varies so much from one community to another because food is so much more than just a functional activity: it is loaded with cultural values, symbols and identities, what the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss called a "total social fact".
"In the US the dominant conception of food is nutritional," Fischler explains. "Feeding oneself is above all a matter of making rational decisions to satisfy bodily needs. In contrast the French have a culinary conception of food, putting the emphasis on flavour and pleasure. In our surveys we asked French and American people to say what they associated with various words. When we suggested 'chocolate cake', the Americans thought of 'guilt', the French, 'birthdays'."
The two cultures also see guests in a different light. "In the US food is regarded as an individual concern," Fischler adds. "Everyone is different and everyone is free to make up their own mind and accept the consequences. It is an individualistic, contract-based model. If someone invites you to dinner, you can tell them you're a vegetarian and no one will be offended. You're entitled to eat differently. In France, on the contrary, food is a collective concern, almost a form of communion: the idea of sharing is a key part of the meal. So there are customs it's hard to get round – people will take a poor view of someone who doesn't partake of the main dish or only eats gluten-free foods. What counts most of all is conviviality."
This model, based on sharing, goes hand in hand with great social pressure. Unlike the Americans or British, the French have little patience with those who diverge from the norm. They tend to disapprove of people who nibble whenever it suits them, start a meal with fruit or do not eat meat. "French-style meals are heavily codified in terms of pace and content," says Martin Bruegel, a historian at the Food and Social Sciences laboratory at the National Institute for Agricultural Research. "They often involve constraints, even a form of discipline, leaving little room for individual wishes. If you don't want to eat at a set time with your workmates or you don't fancy the main dish in a family meal, you must explain yourself. Complying with this ritual can be a bit of an imposition."
Because it requires guests to conform to a large number of standards the French gastronomic meal, which was added to the Unesco World Heritage list in 2010, seems somewhat out of sync with the trend towards greater individualisation. In the 20th century, the French, much as people in other developed countries, discovered the joys of individual emancipation: nowadays they want to decide on the course of their own lives, choose their partner, job, sexual mores and life style. So at first sight this yearning for personal fulfilment seems to be at odds with France's inflexible eating habits (set meal times, unchanging format – starter, main course, dessert – and limited scope for special diets).
Of course, modern life has not gone unnoticed, even in France. Grazing, rejected by nutrition experts as a form of heresy, is on the rise, particularly among young people. In 2010 an Insee survey found that 40% of under-25s consume snacks – crisps and chocolate bars – during the day, compared with half that number among the over-60s. The past 20 years have also simplified the sacrosanct, three-course meal. According to a survey of health and eating habits conducted in 2010 by the National Institute for Prevention and Health Education, the number of people who only eat one or two courses for their evening meal is steadily rising, up from 38% in 1998 to 49% in 2008. With passing time the basic paradigm has become more flexible, in office cafeterias and homes.
"It has loosened up quite a lot," Poulain asserts. "Whereas in the 1960s works canteens only served set meals, they have since introduced self-service systems with several dishes to choose from. At home it's much the same: everyone has some of the main dish, but not necessarily the same afters. It's one of the big changes we've seen in the recent decades, with increasingly individualised choice of foods, even if it mainly concerns the beginning and end of the meal."
Despite such changes – and contrary to what many feared – France has not succumbed to fast food. The French meal still plays a key part in people's lives and imagination. The two main pillars of this model – eating at the same time and socialising – are still just as solid. Regardless of the spread of fast-food outlets, the upheaval in the world of work and the emergence of a youth culture, the French still eat their three meals a day at a set time and attach great importance to conviviality, pleasure and sharing. "For the past 20 years alarmist commentators have repeatedly predicted the demise of the French meal," Saint Pol says. "But meals in France still structure our daily lives and our relations with others."
French eating habits have proved sufficiently robust to survive, even at McDonald's. "When the fast-food outlets first launched in France they were open all day, like in the US, assuming they would have a steady stream of customers," says Jean-Pierre Corbeau, emeritus professor at Tours University. "In practice they were deserted at 9am, but seething from 12 noon to 2pm, because the French go on taking their meals at the customary times. Customers – particularly young people – made it a relatively social experience. Instead of eating on their own, or taking a burger back to their car, they would turn up in groups, all sit together at one table and pass food around."
One of the reasons for the solidity of these customs is that they are firmly rooted in the past. "France has a Roman Catholic tradition which sustains a sensual, hedonistic relation to food," says Pascal Ory, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. "In the Jura, for example, nuns in Château-Chalon took charge of promoting vin jaune. Catholicism, with its celebration of the Eucharist, helped develop a real culture of eating and drinking, with the emphasis on the collective, communal dimension of meals. This is not the case in countries with Anglo-Saxon roots, where Protestantism entertains a more Puritan relationship with food. The Kellogg brothers, for example, were Seventh-day Adventists and vegetarians who wanted to use their corn flakes to combat Falstaff-style breakfasts centring on meat and beer."
In Babette's Feast, the Danish novelist Karen Blixen subtly highlighted these cultural differences. When the central character, a French cook who takes refuge in Denmark after the Paris Commune, wins 10,000 francs in a lottery, she spends the whole lot on a slap-up meal, inviting the two daughters of a Lutheran pastor and their friends. The guests are so embarrassed by this spread, brimming with flavour, fragrance and colour, that they hesitate to indulge. "To begin with they even refrain from commenting on the dishes Babette serves," Fischler observes. "In Protestant countries it is slightly indecent to talk about food at table. In France, on the other hand, such talk is not only legitimate but necessary."
France's rural past is also a major factor in the importance attached to eating. "In peasant families meals were often the only time they stopped working," Corbeau explains. "It was a break for a moment of convivial exchange, sharing and joking. This rural tradition lasted longer in France than in Britain, where industrial and urban development started much earlier. When small French farmers left the land for the factory, in the late 19th century, their entitlement to a proper break was a key issue in negotiations with employers: many workers refused to eat in the workshops, standing beside their machines."
So is this why these traditions are so persistent? The French tend to see gastronomy as an art form. "Grimod de La Reynière, one of the founders of gourmet food criticism, started as a drama critic and often referred to Michelangelo," Ory recalls with a smile. Advocates of a balanced diet have no complaints either: with its emphasis on sharing and togetherness, the French approach to food seems to help limit obesity. "People pay more attention to standards of nutrition in a group than on their own," Bienassis asserts. "We drink in moderation, try to have some of everything, avoid taking a third helping because we are being watched and judged by others. Which is not the case when we nibble on our own beside the fridge."
So the pleasure of having a proper meal is also good for us, which is just as well!
