On Fear of Famine and Overeating

Ironically, my big French food revelation came when the only food in sight was a half-empty bag of chips lying forgotten among empty beer bottles and ashtrays.
In mid-October, Reid Hall students go on a week-long jaunt into the countryside, sightseeing in the provinces by day, and enjoying the company of a French host family by night. I was lucky enough to be placed with the Legret family on the outskirts of Auxerre, a small town in the Bourgogne region between Paris and Dijon.

The Legrets, who live in a beautiful two-story house with apple and cherry trees in the yard, seem almost sitcom-perfect. Catherine, a real-estate agent, is at once chic and approachable. François, who’s in human resources, exudes joviality and easy-goingness. Alexandre, 18, studies international commerce and plays bass in a local ska band. He and his 16-year-old brother Guillaume do their chores without complaining and kiss their parents on the cheeks. Given the domestic bliss in which they appear to exist, it came as little surprise to me that the Legrets regularly enjoy lavish family meals.

On Saturday afternoon, the Legrets treated me to a Moroccan lunch they had picked up at the local gourmet market. We started with pickled carrots and olives, lemony sliced zucchini and summer squash, thick roasted pepper spread, and tabouli bright with parsley, all served from colorful ceramic dishes. After wiping our plates clean with hunks of fresh baguette, we enjoyed mounds of golden couscous topped with a vegetable tagine, and, for the omnivores, chicken skewers and meatballs. Alex and Guillaume cleared the table and set out fresh dessert plates before bringing out a vast assortment of pastries, including date cookies, phyllo-almond rolls, and sesame-covered honey fritters. Finally, Catherine served fragrant coffee in yellow cups, and Alex set out a box of Turkish Delight, the chewy, powdered sugar-coated pistachio candy that he loves so much.

Though I was eating delicious food with charming people, I couldn’t manage to push away a feeling of disquiet that recurred throughout the meal. With each new course, as I noted the small servings the Legrets were eating, I wondered, “Is this it? What if this is the last course? Will I get enough to eat?” Unused to French meal patterns, and unsure of when the food would stop coming, I took a little more food than I needed from each serving dish. By the end of the meal, I was stuffed.

It wasn’t until that night that I finally learned to stop worrying and love the ways of the French. Alex brought me along to a friend’s party to watch the Rugby World Cup semifinals between France and England. The 20 or so French teenagers at the party had been smoking hashish and drinking since before we arrived. Two or three hours into the party, they were still going strong. About 60 empty beer bottles were strewn on the table and across the floor, and ashtrays were overflowing with the ends of joints. Someone opened the mini-refrigerator to reveal a full supply of unopened beer bottles, some of which he passed casually along to his friends. Three separate parties around the room were cheerfully engaging in the arduous process of teasing bits of hashish apart with their fingers and wrapping it in rolling papers.

And, as I surveyed the apparently never-ending psychotropic bounty before me, it hit me: there’s no need to worry. In France, it seems, there is always more than enough.
I suspect I am not the only American with scarcity issues, an irrational fear of not getting enough that manifests itself in overeating. Anyone with a pulse is aware of the creep-up in portion sizes that has marked the American food supply in past decades—to those of us who grew up after the onset of meal-size inflation, anything less than gargantuan appears meager. And yet I have frequently cleaned my oversized plate or polished off some enormous serving of food and immediately wanted to keep eating, despite my fullness. Gigantic helpings of one kind of food leave me stuffed but never satisfied.

The French, as exemplified by the Legret family, know how to get satisfied without stuffing themselves. Eating is an event to which lots of time is devoted—the meals I enjoyed at the Legret house frequently lasted over an hour. The Legrets use real china to serve dishes (even store-bought ones) and change plates between courses. Cheese, bread, and dessert are customary, if not obligatory. And, though portions are small by American standards, there is always, always plenty of food.

On Sunday, the Legrets and I ate a lunch of a caramelized onion and chèvre frittata, cut neatly into wedges, followed by a green salad, and roasted cauliflower drizzled with melted butter. We helped ourselves to hunks of five different kinds of cheese from the cheese tray that’s always in the refrigerator. We poured drams of blackberry liqueur into champagne flutes and topped them off with sparkling wine. We finished the meal with an apple and fig crisp and more perfectly brewed coffee. And as I got up from the table, having eaten plenty (but not too much), what I felt—instead of mere fullness—was fulfillment.