School directors take trip overseas to learn healthy eating tips

PARIS — A team of officials from the United States visited a French primary school on Tuesday looking for tips to promote healthy eating from a lesson teaching children how to appreciate good food.

With a fresh croissant on each desk and a pen in hand, the class of eight and nine year-olds were encouraged to use their five senses to examine the pastries at length and describe the experience, as the delegation looked on.

The pupils in the Paris suburb of Roissy-en-Brie were taking part in a three year-old government programme to promote food awareness and healthy eating in schools, and had previously carried out similar taste tests on bread and cheese.

The Director of Food Management in New York City for public schools, Stephen O'Brien, said he and colleagues -- representing cities including Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles -- had much to learn from France's "premiere culture" for food.

The stakes are higher than promoting refined palettes. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), the rate of childhood obesity in French children is under half that of the United States.

"I do think that by teaching food culture in schools you can tackle the adverse effects of over-eating, obesity, sodium, all of those things that are becoming chronic throughout the world, not just in the United States," O'Brien said.

"These students will remember this lesson for their whole lives."

But will the students really take the time to size up and sniff their evening meal after school because of these occasional "taste classes"? 

"When the children go home in the evening, do they think about a lesson about verb conjugations or vocabulary? I don't know," said head teacher Yannick Choulet.

"I'm not revolutionising family lives, that's not the point. But what I want to teach is curiosity,