Translator: Travis Lawrence Reviewer: Eléa Weibel
Thank you.
So, the improbable, the invisible,
always squeezes itself into the very mundane aspects of daily life,
like eating.
And to begin,
I'll tell you a little true story.
There's a university professor of Algerian descent,
and one day he has a conversation with his father,
and the father reveals a family secret to him.
He tells him, "Listen, before your mom, there was another woman in my life."
So the son says, "Why didn't it work?"
Generally, it wasn't very common.
So he says,
"Well, there was a problem, the father of my soon-to-be wife,
saw me one day in the town square,
I was all alone, standing, and I was eating.
And he thought, "I can't give my daughter
to a guy who acts like this."
Eating alone, in public, in a lot of cultures,
is something that doesn't work.
In front of an audience older than you, this story makes people laugh.
People understand. You didn't.
(Laughter)
And it's a test, or almost a test.
Why?
Because, in the majority of cultures,
or at least in a lot of cultures still,
you eat together or in a group.
I'm not saying that everyone eats together,
but let's say that there is a hierarchy, some order,
sometimes the patriarch eats all alone,
sometimes the women don't sit,
but in general, it's a collective matter
Why is it a collective matter?
Because it's a matter of sharing,
of distribution, of hierarchy, etc.
This is a lunch, or let's say, a meal in the middle of the day in Dakar.
So, you eat with the right hand,
contrary to what it can seem like to us here,
there are extremely specific table manners:
you can't pick from the other side of the plate,
you push the best pieces towards the elderly,
to whomever has prestige, and you can't hurry to much,
you can't eat more than others [and] faster than others.
Same here, except we have spoons, that's in Kabylie.
Around the fire.
Obviously, the shape, the circle is very important.
The circle means that everyone is equal.
The knights of the Round table chose the round shape,
"so that none should prevail".
By the way, you see, there needs to be a special seat
so that the king is recognizable and so that his presence is manifest.
And then obviously,
when you begin to form rectangular shapes or spread out,
therein lies the problem of placement, of hierarchy, no?
Is it the end of each side?
You know when we go to a restaurant
and someone sits at the end, we ask: "You chair?"
Or is it the middle of the table?
Especially when there is a painter or photographer to immortalize it,
you can't have people's backs showing, can you?
And that's apparently pretty universal, this matter.
That's in Japan.
That's a good lunch of French board of directors.
It's already clearly even more formal,
that's how we depict we think of French food abroad,
which is why it's hard to sell French fast food.
Speaking of, regarding fast food,
the tell of the guy who eats standing up, and is frowned upon,
well it's not as foreign to France as it may seem.
The proof is in the 80s...
I will show you a small TV commercial,
made by Etienne Chatiliez: Life Is a Long Quiet River,
for a French fast food brand,
which didn't have a lot of success for a long time, it disappeared,
but it speaks volumes.
Here is what happens in this fast food restaurant as shown in the video.
(Video) Narrator:
This man is in a fast food restaurant.
He is eating standing up. Why? Because if he sits,
if he sits, it'll be his knees eating instead of him.
Man: That's smart.
Narrator: So he eats standing up. Man: Well obviously.
Narrator: and standing... Woman: You don't have 100 Francs?
Narrator: Standing, he feeds his feet.
Man: And you find that funny?
Dry cleaner: Yes.
Narrator: Let's look now at a Free Timer. He's eating while sitting. Why?
Because at Free Time, there are chairs for the buttocks,
and plants for the eyes.
Woman: I'm Natasha, and you?
Voice: And sandwich ties for the meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions,
to stay in the bun.
Result: The Free Timer eats in peace,
while the other guy is already feeding his dry cleaner.
Man: My dry cleaner is rich.
Narrator: Free time - the long-burger restaurant [in English]
Claude Fischler: So you see, eating while standing
was a characteristic that was perceived from fast food chains at first;
incidentally, it's no longer really the case.
And fast food has really succeeded in France,
but it succeeded in a specific way by adjusting to local characteristics.
For example, the turnover for big fast food brands:
80% of business is done at meal times, particularly at lunch time.
It's not like in the USA, where you get there at 10 am,
order a hamburger, and eat it in your car.
There's much more in practice - one of my colleagues, Jean-Pierre Corbeau,
wrote a paper, about the restaurant, Quick, that is on the Internet.
He says, "The only thing that is fast in fast food is the service.
Otherwise, it's often used like a restaurant by the French."
So, what are the stigmas attached to eating alone?
That's in Dakar again.
This is what we call a greasy spoon in Dakar.
They have a bad reputation, why?
Well because it allows people to get out of the group obligation of a midday meal,
and the men who go to them really like to go there all alone,
They have a controversial reputation.
It's said a number of things happen there, you can't see inside,
there are ladies, and men go there alone.
And if someone eats apart from the group, doesn't participate in the group meal -
dinnermate in slang, togetherness at the table -
it's probably that they have something to hide.
Whether they eat more than their share, they stole something,
or they have something they don't want to share,
or worse even, maybe they have a history with "the evil eye,"
casting spells, who knows, poisoning.
Sometimes, we are wary of these slightly alternative behaviors, understandably.
Eating all alone, in a school cafeteria, for example,
is a sign that something's not going so well.
Incidentally, the little kid in question eats in 8 minutes,
while all of his friends eat in 15 to 20 minutes.
He wants to get it over with quickly.
I took this photo at a chain in Paris,
and I saw this guy two times in two weeks,
and each time, he was eating all alone in front of his computer.
He was watching old clips of Casimir between the courses,
and during the courses, he watched something else that I don't remember,
but anyway, he had his own ritual,
It seemed to represent everything that was most able to be criticized
in modern eating,
but there is one thing that I would like you to notice,
you see, he has the wine, the bread, the plate, the salad,
he has already eaten the hors-d'œuvre, the steak and the fries,
and he will probably have a dessert.
This means he is eating his meal in the perfect French order!
It's a dinner structured in the French way,
and it's very different from this, for example.
Here, where, of course, we isolate ourselves
because, in the car, we are in a bubble, in a private space,
but you can drive at the same time,
it's a lot, studies show us,
and it's radically different in nature
from what took place before.
So, what's my point?
This is Thanksgiving in the 40s
in a picture by the great American illustrator, Norman Rockwell.
It serves as propaganda for the war,
"it's worth fighting for", "we are shielded from need", etc.
and the turkey makes everyone happy,
everyone is waiting, the turkey is put in the middle, and it's a party.
And 60 or 70 years later, in the New Yorker,
we are told, this is The Last Thanksgiving.
Why is it the last Thanksgiving?
There's no turkey in the center
because everyone has an eating problem,
the first is strictly kosher and the other is on a diet "without",
the other is a traditionalist, fanatic, on a macrobiotic diet, vegan, vegetarian,
lactose intolerant, doesn't eat salt, etc.
Meaning that, overall, what brings people together, divides them.
Or, in any case, each individual claims their autonomy and freedom
and after all, why not?
So, this has been dealt with, I'm promoting myself,
this book will be coming out, and there was a big meeting,
where all of these questions
were discussed at the same time with doctors, for allergies, gluten, etc.
and sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and researchers
to try to understand
what this large movement towards individualization is,
where someone that eats alone while standing
couldn't have the right to marry the fiancée of his dreams,
not there at least, but in another country, in another culture,
but things have changed a lot, obviously,
we now demand to eat differently than others,
as if it was one of the fundamental rules of hospitality
or community.
We have something in France,
other speakers before have talked about Montaigne,
and Montaigne says somewhere in his essays:
"I say, like Epicurus,
with whom a person eats is of greater importance than what is eaten."
So, the question of guests, of togetherness at the table,
is absolutely fundamental for the French,
and is that still the case today?
Of course, as soon as I uttered the words togetherness at the table in front
of a French crowd, unlike other cultures,
I'll automatically be given friendliness, friendly,
but togetherness is anything you want, but not necessarily friendliness,
it can be very annoying;
I mean, people from my generation remember, with a certain horror,
Sunday lunches that would last 3 hours,
where you weren't allowed to speak,
you had to eat everything on your plate,
or, at least, agree to eat a little of everything,
and you weren't allowed to get up before being given permission.
It was very annoying, very hierarchical, very formal,
and not as festive as that, in the end.
So, there is still something that remains fundamentally different,
from other countries, from a lot of other cultures, in France -
this graphic is a little blurry, that's not a big deal -
You see three spikes in dark blue, those are the French, the meals,
at the bottom, the hours of the day and the number of occasions.
They're studies on schedules,
done by national statistic institutes.
What does it show?
Roughly, the peak in the middle is the meal at noon.
That means that at 1:00, whatever the day of the week,
you have 50% of French people eating,
and if 50% of French people are eating at the same time,
I am willing to bet
that there are still quite a few who are eating together.
In red, those are the Americans, equal figures.
You see that there are barely two little peaks that appear,
and then there have to be opportunities to eat
that disappear in the study,
because if not, I don't understand how Americans
could have obesity rates that are three times higher than us.
Two or three times more.
So, these very strict meal times differentiate us from everyone else,
it's very solid, you find that in all the studies,
and it doesn't shift so much because since 1982,
we saw that there was a little drop.
The other measurement: the time spent eating daily.
You see at the top on the right, France,
how much? 135 minutes a day,
and that's more or less increased in the latest studies, curiously.
Why curiously? Because in every country,
the time meant for meal preparation has gone down,
and the time meant for consuming food has gone down as well.
In France, the time preparing food has gone down,
but less so for the time spent eating.
And on the other side, what do we have?
We have Mexico, Canada, the USA, who, surprisingly,
and there I'm pushing our questions a little,
on the countries, Mexico and the USA in particular,
who have the highest obesity rates on the planet.
So, the question is,
people who consume food,
following a French model,
would they see any health benefits?
This is a question that both stirs us and interests us.
So, it seems that there is something from this order
that is perhaps worth exploring.
For example, here is the average increase in body mass index
that allows us to evaluate obesity, bulkiness, overweight, etc. since 1980.
People have done a meta-analysis,
which means taking all existing data,
and sorting through it to make it a little more compatible,
and you look at what that gives.
You see that in the USA, the UK, Australia,
they all have had an increase of about one BMI point since 1980.
There are three countries that have gotten by a lot better -
there are four in reality,
but I took away the Sultanat de Brunei table
because I didn't really know what to do with it -
(Laughter)
Switzerland, Italy, France, France particularly,
let's say that they've only increased by 0.3 or 0.4.
We're not really wondering there,
you know, you are surely like me,
you hear alarming messages everyday
that say, "Watch out! We're becoming obese."
I no longer have a timer,
meaning that I'll continue as much as I want or I'll stop?
Well, we'll see...
(Laughter)
So, finally, the question we ask is:
How is it that we haven't looked at this closer,
and understood, why we, in France,
we've finally experienced an increase in obesity like everybody else,
but less than others?
And this smaller increase is what fascinates me.
I would like to know why the Japanese -
it's still a very developed country,
even if we call it Western, which is a bit of an exaggeration -
the French, the Italians a little bit, and certain Swiss,
up until now have experienced an increase in obesity rates less than others.
Does this have a connection to social factors,
eating habits, interactions around meals,
structure of meals, daily food intake, etc.?
It's still amazing that the medical discipline of nutrition,
which is still young, hasn't realized
that what makes us eat what we eat the way we eat
is not just that we are individuals
who make choices everyday: saying, we're going to eat this and that,
armed with our calculator, our computer, nutrition labels,
recommended daily allowances, of this or that on goods, etc.
Hypothetically, that's what we're supposed to do.
We are supposed to eat alone, make decisions, make healthy choices,
so as to eradicate junk food this way,
dear to Joël de Rosnay's heart,
who is blamed everyday.
But it doesn't work like that because we don't eat alone,
or, at least, we still don't eat as alone as elsewhere,
there seems to be little hope.
What happened is that nutrition acted a little like the economy.
And the economy what does it see?
It sees that there are economic agents who are individuals,
there is the State, and between the two, there is nothing.
There aren't families, there aren't institutions,
there are businesses somewhere,
but, in the end, the problem for them is the State,
and the individual who is considered like a kind of social atom,
an atom that makes choices,
with preferences that are supposed to be stable,
and that try to maximize their usefulness (in slang),
meaning, actually,
always choosing what will bring the most satisfaction,
at least from a probability standpoint.
So the question is: is it a rational choice?
And in nutrition, we do exactly like it's the same thing.
We say, "There are individuals,
they will look at what is offered, they will make choices,
they have stable preferences."
However, we know that preferences can change,
at a meal, you will see someone eating something next to you,
you will want to eat this thing,
or well, you will share this thing.
In short, we are not rational economic agents, in the end,
who make choices based on stable and constant preferences.
Therefore, the tactical bait that was used up until know, which was:
to inform individuals so that they make good choices,
what has it given as a result?
Well, there is a country where, for a hundred years,
there's been this approach, it's called the USA,
and they are the global leaders in obesity.
So the least we can say is that it's worked poorly,
the worst is that, perhaps, it's a part of the cause of the problem.
And so, now - this is our nutritional program -
nutrition must be social,
and we have to start from context, which is the act of eating,
because it's easier to change the context,
sometimes changing what's in people's heads,
and to get it from behavior.
What I propose
is to look at the eater as what they are and not as what they should be,
to look at the context,
and, to say, finally, that sometimes
it's easier to change the world,
than to change what is in our minds.
Thank you.
(Applause)