The International Engineer

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

How long does it take you to eat your lunch? And more importantly, do you multitask when eating or do you just take time to sit and enjoy the food? Personally, I take anywhere from 10- 40 minutes to eat lunch and am typically watching something, calling someone, reading a book, or doing a number of things while eating. 

So imagine my surprise when I arrived in France and my orientation lunch was two and a half hours long of sitting in a restaurant and eating. It turns out that two hour lunches are the norm in France. In fact, the French have a very interesting relationship with food. La gustation is very important to French culture, which I discovered after I received a “bonne gustation” every time I ordered something at a cafe or restaurant. 

In the beginning of my stay, the long lunch breaks really irritated me; I’m used to New York hustle culture after all, and who has the time to take two hours of their day to eat lunch? But a few months into my semester I began seeing the benefits of a longer lunch. For one thing, much of the lunch is related to a social experience. It is a chance to sit down with the people you’re surrounded by and get to know them. 

This is especially valuable in academic settings when getting to know your coworkers on a more personal level is difficult. For example, I have an internship at a science laboratory. Every day at noon all the researchers stop what they’re doing and head downstairs for lunch break. The PI eats lunch with her post-docs, PhD students, masters students, and sometimes her supervisor. The research hierarchy momentarily disintegrates as all members of a lab enjoy their meal together amidst laughter and stories of their days. In the US, this strict 12:00 lunch break where everyone eats together seems to be more infrequent based on my experience. In my old lab, a few members would gather to eat together at varying times during the week. Sometimes people would pop into the break room to say hi and then rush off to finish an experiment, parting with an “I’ll see you guys later!” 

Part of it seems to be related to the French work mentality. I already discussed this “work to live” ideology in a previous post, but the French really do seem to “live” for their lunch break. It is also why shops, libraries, etc.  close around lunchtime and then reopen again in the late afternoon. Implicitly, it signifies that relationships outweigh work, which is very different from the US. In the US, work is a means of forming relationships, especially in higher academia. 

And most of all, it is about the food. Food is meant to be an experience in France. The telltale sign? The amount of fat and carbs contained in the majority of French food. There is bread, cheese and wine everywhere. Ironically, France has much lower rates of obesity and diabetes compared to America despite the fact that in America, food is looked at from a nutritional standpoint. This is the French paradox that confuses many Americans. That and the fact that France remains one of the world’s most productive countries, despite their indulgence in food. 

While it still fills me with anxiety to take a longer than needed lunch break with a full agenda, I’m learning to appreciate the lunches while I’m here. As a whole, they force me to take a rest break and look forward to socialization. And they’re making me appreciate food as something more than just “energy” that falls somewhere on Michelle Obama’s myPlate. It truly is an experience, just as Remy in Ratatouille was trying to teach us all along.