5 fruit and veg a day....or not

[Rob G]

We've been in France nearly three months now, and have had a few opportunities during this time to be invited to eat with french friends, and to invite French friends to our house for a meal. We have noticed that the French don't seem to go in for serving or eating portions of vegetables with their main course in the same way that we do. To illustrate:

- Our first dinner party was ahen we invited a French family round for a traditional English Christmas meal - turkey and trimmings, crackers, Christmas pud, the lot. It was a great success and enjoyed by all, but afterwards we were left with several dishes of untouched vegetables (peas, sprouts, carrots etc.). At the time, we were somewhat bemused by this.

- Subsequently we've been to a few French people's houses for dinner, and seem to have found the same phenomenon. Either they will serve for example roast chicken with just potatoes and no other vegetable, or they will serve some kind of casserole that contains vegetables as well as meat. We have yet to be served a meal with vegetables as an accompaniment.

Interested to know whether anyone else has come across this, and/or knows where it comes from?

Rob

[Opalienne]

It's changed a lot in the last fifteen years or so.   Previously you would be served meat and potatoes, with vegetables as a separate course.   Now the vegetable course seems to have pretty much disappeared.   I wondered whether it might be to do with greater affluence - vegetables being very much the everyday food of the poor, when visitors are expected people make an effort and leave them out.   But that's just a guess.   It's possible that your Christmas visitors were expecting you to tuck into the vegetables after the turkey, though funnily enough, when I eat a salad after the meat instead of with it, I am accused of being 'Parisienne'!

[Cat]

I know, I find it strange too, especially when you see all the veg they have for sale at the local markets.  They must make an awful lot of soup!

I love my veggies, but very often they just aren't an option and it's simply meat and some kind of carb (potato, pasta or rice seeming to be the favourites). Having said that though, the last time I ate out my main course was flambed prawns, served with chips AND pasta [:S]

In our local auberge they have a sign saying that vegetables are available... on request!

 

 

[Christine Animal]

Yes, it's true, the English way always seemed potatoes plus other vegetables, but always potatoes... and I always do potatoes whatever else there is as "greens".  But in French restaurants or the "self" when they dish you out a plate as you go past with your tray and choose the meat, they then ask "frites" or "haricots verts"?  Once in a restaurant here my father got his meat with haricots verts and said "what, no frites!", so we had to order some apart.

After being in France, it seemed funny going back to English restaurants where all the waiters come round with all the different veg, piling it up on your plate.  Once we were all in stitches, but not knowing whether to laugh or not as it was in quite a high class restaurant and as the bow tied waiters flocked around the table, one came round to my mother and said "a little more stuffing madam?"...

 

[Blanche Neige]

The above comments are oh so true! how the French manage to have 5 fruit and veg per day is a mystery to me.

 

When eating out I try to have a starter from the salad buffet this way I can at least have some sort of veg. Often in the restaurants the choice with the main dish meat or fish is potatoes, rice, pasta OR green beans so I opt for the beans as the less fattening option. They also seem to be good at over cooking any veg. that is served so that the vitamins are probably long gone.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

...and why are those strange, greyish tinned petit pois so edible? They should be disgusting, but I can't get enough of the damned things.

The French, it has to be said, seem to rather over cook their

vegetables. I got into a long running arguement with a French guy I

used to work with about this. He came up with the old chestnut that the

English kill their meat twice. A mercy, I said, compared to the

unspeakable tortures that the French inflict upon the humble carrot.

Not so, retorted he; were carottes vichy not sublime? Hmmm...mused I,

but what about crispped bacon. This went on for about 18 months, and

became quite agreeable - we were young and rich and could afford to

support our opposing points of view in some of the capital's better

restaurants. We never did quite manage to resolve our disagreement.

[Wendy]

When we did our first Reveillon(New Years Eve) we served turkey, chestnuts and roast potatoes. They loved it and commented how wonderful it was that we were able to cook 'french food'!.  Just what is 'french food' these days?.On another note, my local shops sell, what I term to be, really rotten fruit and veg. At normal prices. Is this generally accepted in France?.

[Blanche Neige]

On another note, my local shops sell, what I term to be, really rotten fruit and veg. At normal prices. Is this generally accepted in France?.

Wen

I mentioned this point to French friends once, their reply was that it is much better to buy fruit and veg in the markets and I have to agree.

[Mikew]

Our French friends said that vegetables were only for peasants!! Amused the other day, the lady before me in the queue was buying one large tatty outer stick of celery (soup?) and it was being carefully weighed...

[Opalienne]

[quote user="Mikew"]Our French friends said that vegetables were only for peasants!! Amused the other day, the lady before me in the queue was buying one large tatty outer stick of celery (soup?) and it was being carefully weighed...
[/quote]

 

That confirms my guess, then.  It's to do with increased affluence (or at least trying to give the impression of it to visitors)

[Loiseau]

And I have noticed that when the French *do* serve veg, they really cook them for a l-o-n-g time.

I have cooked my guests green beans by boiling them for 10 minutes and then served them up, and the French ones said said "Gosh although you didn't cook them for long, they're quite nice!"

Another time I was at the house of some friends, and the wife was going to cook broccoli.  She boiled it for 45 minutes...

...in a pressure cooker !!

Angela

[andyh4]

Of course you need to recognise that teh french - like me - get their 5 in a different way to the English:

 

Chardonnay followed by

sauvignon blanc

pinot gris

syrah

cabernet suavignon ...............................................

 

 

[Pixietoadstool]

"I wondered whether it might be to do with greater affluence - vegetables being very much the everyday food of the poor"

King Henry VIII may have died from scurvy (or possibly syphilis or both) - anyhow he was pretty unhealthy because he viewed vegetables as food for the poor - hence his cook served him mostly meat.

 

[Teamedup]

When I visited the Science Centre in Toronto there was a bit where you could input  your diet and it would tell you if you were eating healthily. I did it twice, once with my usual diet and once with a typical french diet. Their computer was very unkind about the typical french diet, especially the  lack of fruit and veg.

I don't like and can't eat as most of the french people we know do on a daily basis. We like our veggies far too much.

 

What always gets me, and I had words with a dieticienne last week about it is hot or cold meals and sandwiches. I said that I couldn't eat a bit of meat and pates twice a day and would rather have a sandwich for one meal. She insisted that it wasn't hot and pates and say a steak hache was better for me than a sandwich. I will never understand it, especially as the sandwiches we like are bourré with salad stuff. Incidentally, she did say that if I wanted bread I should eat it with my pates and meat.

[Rob G]

My post has evidently struck a chord....

We've just got back from a trip to Lidl, where we tend to bulk buy things like water, orange juice, coffee etc. (they also do a very nice Corbières at about 1€30 a bottle...) We noticed that even in Lidl, they have quite a large area given over to fresh fruit and veg. The question is, given all the comments above, who actually buys the stuff and eats it?!

Rob

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Rob G"]My post has evidently struck a chord....

We've

just got back from a trip to Lidl, where we tend to bulk buy things

like water, orange juice, coffee etc. (they also do a very nice

Corbières at about 1€30 a bottle...) We noticed that even in Lidl, they

have quite a large area given over to fresh fruit and veg. The question

is, given all the comments above, who actually buys the stuff and eats

it?!

Rob

[/quote]

Leaving the vegetables to one side, as it were, from what I can see,

fresh fruit is eaten far more commonly as a dessert in France than

anything else, at least in the home. I can only speak for our school,

but the majority of children who bring snacks, bring fruit.

Supermarkets sell fruit and vegetables in quantity (or they would not

bother stocking them - they are in business after all, and this would

be a watse of retail space otherwise), market stall holders still make

a living out of hawking it, and in the country hardly a garden seems to

be without something in the food line.

I can only assume that, generally, people do not serve vegetables to

guests. I know we don't, but I couldn't tell you why we don't

(something to do with having been seen to have killed the fatted calf,

rather than the plump carrot), and we get through tonnes of vegetables

and fruit.

[Teamedup]

I don't find that people eat more fruit here than friends or family in the UK. And veg, well, it is the way it is eaten that I can't be doing with. I can't eat a plate of say haricot vert, or carrots, or cauliflower with nothing else or just a bit of meat and no gravy as sauces are not always made. And if I was going to eat a plate of 'dry' cooked veg, then at least I would like a few small portions of a variety of veggies.

Once we were served a plate of haricot each that had been picked from the garden that day.  No butter, no nothing. We were 'told' that as the haricot were so fresh that they did not 'need' anything on them. When we had eaten them, a few merguez were served afterwards.  I find such eating, boring and without merit.

So it isn't that people don't eat veggies and they do souper. It is a different way of eating them and isn't the way I like them.   

 

 

[Christine Animal]

I think they can do it !

http://www.linternaute.com/femmes/sante/conseils/fruits-legumes.shtml

 

[Tourangelle]

They snack a lot less I think.  If you have ever been to eat in

university canteens, school canteens or company canteens, there are a

lot of veg and fruit about.  I've done all three, and generally

you will find that there is a dish of something like radish or sliced

tomato as a starter, or often half a gratefruit, then the obligatory

haricot verts with the meal and you can take a piece of fruit for the

end of your meal.  So that would be three just at lunch

time.  So if your average French person has had this at lunch and

their fruit juice at breakfast, come the evening they may only need one

more portion.

[Poppy]

S

[Christine Animal]

What Tourangelle says is true, there is hardly any snacking between meals.

And yes, a lot of people have their own fruit and vegetables from their garden, and they eat them!  And they give us a lot when they have too much!  Sometimes I have said to people in French "do you have a garden" and "jardin" to them is the "potager", the vegetable garden, and when they say yes that is what the mean, not a lawn and trees.

They do not pile different types of vegetables on one plate, but apart from the steak frites and the côte d'agneau haricots verts, they eat a lot of vegetables in a different way, more mijotés and cuisinés in main course dishes such as :

endives au jambon, chou farci, boeuf aux carottes, pot au feu, potée, tomates farcies, etc.

and in salads such as salade d'endives, tomatoes, beetroot, carrots râpées, and asparagus, artichokes and all.

Now I'll shut up...

 

 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Christine Animal"]

Now I'll shut up...

 [/quote]

Please don't - you're giving me some ideas on what to feed the brats

now that they are out of the school canteen for a couple of weeks. They

really like some of this stuff - grated carrot and diced beetroot are

particular favourites, which I cannot imagine that I would have had

anything to do with whan I were at their tender age.

[PossumGirl]

I came to France several times a year for over 25  years before we finally moved last year.  Of course, a lot of that time was spent visiting friends and family.  At least with our family, everyone eats lots of fruits and vegetables.  The vegetables are always served with the meal, even when there are also potatoes, rice or another starch.  Certainly, my MIL makes lots of different sauces and I've never been served plain vegetables with nothing on them, even if it was butter and seasonings.

Don't you think that there are good, bad and indifferent cooks everywhere in the world?  Just because someone is French, doesn't automatically mean that they know how to cook!

PG

[Teamedup]

I can't say that the people who gave us plain veg are bad cooks. We have had some lovely food in sauces at their home. Just they have been known to get carried away with their own sense of what is good to eat though and how good she at least believed her home grown produce to be.

[PossumGirl]

[quote user="Teamedup"]I can't say that the people who gave us plain veg are bad cooks. We have had some lovely food in sauces at their home. Just they have been known to get carried away with their own sense of what is good to eat though and how good she at least believed her home grown produce to be.[/quote]

I suppose that's just one of those personal differences that crop up.  She probably doesn't understand why you think plain veggies are bland.

PG