Do French Children Have a Healthy Relationship With Alcohol?

[Robin Garr]

Fascinating article in The New York Times. No real news here for us, of course, but it's good to see the research, and The Times giving it space:

Do Children in France Have a Healthier Relationship With Alcohol?
The Italian Senator Dario Stefàno proposed a bill last month that would require schools in Italy to teach one hour of wine culture a week to students starting at age 6. Mr. Stefàno clarified that the intention was to teach children about the cultural importance of wine in Italy, rather than to teach them to drink. But the idea of wine education for children would seem very foreign to most American parents.

Still, whether parents in the United States or elsewhere realize it or not, most children are already getting an informal education in alcohol consumption. From infancy, children are learning about their worlds – the rituals, practices, and languages that make their culture thrive. What adults eat – and drink – is a major part of this cultural fabric. Food selection is learned early in life, and it is social from the get-go. ...
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/2 ... d=fb-share

Sorry to be a party pooper but I think that tales of "a healthy relationship with alcohol" in France are much exaggerated. When I first started visiting France in the 50s and 60s, very many French people, especially men, consumed large quantities of cheap wine throughout the day without ever becoming overtly drunk. Alcohol related deaths were very high and alcoholism was public enemy no.1 for public health officials. Milk drinking Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès-France, was considered very bold when he had posted everywhere a message saying "Jamais plus d'un litre par jour"; Since then the anti-alcohol campaign has been conspicuously successful and alcohol consumption has declined sharply. Many families are now teetotal but Public Health officials are still not satisfied and alcohol consumption is systematically demonized with severe restrictions on advertising drink.

It is true that public displays of drunkenness are much less common in France than in the UK but people here are concerned about an upsurge in binge drinking amongst French youth, whose behaviour is becoming closer to that of their British equivalents. Maybe this can be traced in part to the decline in the number of families having a "healthy relationship with alcohol" to give the example .

Regarding binge drinking by youth: We have been pushing the "alcohol is a drug" message for decades. So why should we be surprised that young people treat alcohol as if it were a drug?

-Paul W.

> Jamais plus d'un litre par jour

Those signs were in the Metro when I lived there in '75-76.

An American friend there had a Welsh boyfriend, and he was astonished at the amount drinking. He worked in construction, and after the early-morning breakfast "ballon", at 10 AM every day work would stop, the workers would pull out giant sandwiches and plastic litres of wine and they wouldn't go back to work until the litres were empty. When I visited again in '80, I had lunch with a French friend and her family, and they were amused when I said it was too early to join them in an aperatif, around noon (but to be fair, we went through only a 75cl bottle of Bordeaux during the lunch, among four adults).