Karen Le Billon

Moving her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon expected some cultural adjustment. But she didn't expect to be lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack, or to be forbidden from packing her older daughter a school lunch. Karen is intrigued by the fact that French children happily eat everything—from beets to broccoli, from salad to spinach—while French obesity rates are a fraction of what they are in North America. Karen soon begins to see the wisdom in the "food rules" that the French use to foster healthy eating habits and good manners in babies and children. Some of the rules call into question both our eating habits and our parenting styles. Other rules evoke commonsense habits that we used to share but have somehow forgotten. Taken together, the rules suggest that we need to dramatically rethink the way we feed children, at home and at school. Combining personal anecdotes with practical tips and appetizing recipes—including Zucchini and Spinach Puree and Bouillabaisse (Fish Soup) for Babies—French Kids Eat Everything is a humorous, provocative look at families, food, and children that is filled with inspiration and advice that every parent can use.

French Kids Eat Everything is a wonderfully wry account of how Karen Le Billon was able to alter her children’s deep-rooted, decidedly unhealthy North American eating habits while they were all living in France. At once a memoir, a cookbook, a how-to handbook, and a delightful exploration of how the French manage to feed children without endless battles and struggles with pickiness, French Kids Eat Everything features recipes, practical tips, and ten easy-to-follow rules for raising happy and healthy young eaters—a sort of French Women Don’t Get Fat meetsFood Rules.

From the author of the popular French Kids Eat Everything , a simple, easy and surprisingly fun way to change dinnertime reactions from YUCK to YUM. Are mealtimes with your kids a source of frustration? Ever wonder how on earth to get them to eat the recommended 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day (or even per week)? Getting to YUM is a practical and engaging guide for parents eager to get past their children's food resistance—or avoid it altogether. It introduces 7 Secrets of Raising Eager Eaters (Secret 1: Teach your child to eat, just like you teach them to read! or Secret 6: Teach me to do it kid participation is every parent's secret weapon). Karen Le Billon, author of French Kids Eat Everything , coaches readers through the process of taste training, including strategies, games and experiments that will encourage even reluctant eaters to branch out. Over 100 delicious, kid-tested, age-appropriate recipes lead families step-by-step through the process of "learning to love new foods," enabling kids to really enjoy the foods we know they should be eating. Wise and compelling, Getting to YUM is grounded in revolutionary new research on the science of taste. Packed full of observations from real-life families, it provides everything parents need to transform their children—from babies to toddlers to teens—into good eaters for life.