Three square meals rule eating habits

MOST French people are still sitting down to three square meals a day, a study has shown.

Though eating habits have changed slightly in recent years, nine out of 10 still eat three meals a day, sitting down to eat at the traditional hours and typically eating three courses in each meal, research by the National Institute of Agronomical Research (Inra) shows.

The institute analysed 1,600 scientific publications as part of an eating habits study for the Agriculture Ministry.

Changes over the past century included an increase in the amounts of fats eaten, but a decrease in sugars.

There has also been a decline in the amount of traditional foods eaten, such as bread, pasta and potatoes, but an increase in consumption of processed foods, such as factory-made patisseries, dairy-based desserts and ready-meals. While it is still the exception, eating outside home has increased.

The report says teenagers tend to eat in a less structured way, but this changes when they grow up.

However to encourage this, good eating habits must be established early; taste preferences start in the seventh month of pregnancy and are reinforced in the first two years of childhood.

At that age, children have a good ability to control their food intake and acquire habits that will last, the report said.

You should offer babies and toddlers a wide range of foods and keep insisting.

You may need to offer a child a new food eight times before he accepts it and starts to like it.

Eating habits often also change in old age, the report found, and many elderly people do not have a balanced diet.

This is owing to factors such as living alone, medicines that alter the taste of foods and problems with chewing.

The report said it was difficult to establish a hard-and-fast link between nutrition and levels of such major illnesses as cancer and heart disease.

However dietary changes were clearly linked to an increase in obesity, which affected 6.5% of adults in 1980 and 11.5% by 2006.