As I prepared for my time abroad, I was filling out a questionnaire for my home stay placement when I came to the section inquiring about an dietary needs, including specifying a need for vegetarian and vegan diets. As a vegetarian, I became slightly worried that my request would make my placement more difficult because I knew beforehand that vegetarianism is much, much less common in France than in the United States. When I arrived in my home stay, my host family did seem surprised that I was a vegetarian, but my entire time here my home and school have worked hard to provide me with meals sans viande.

At home it is common for people to have meals without meat, and finding alternatives is rarely a problem, but if it were not directly addressed, it would be nearly impossible for me to eat lunch and dinner with my school and host family as EVERY lunch has meat and nearly every dinner has meat. And even regular meat eaters might be a little frightened by the duck pate served:

In this picture you can see my alternative of tomato and melon. The chefs at the school seemed a little lost as to what could be suitable for the vegetarians in our program and this was most apparent with our packed lunches for our excursions. While most students received a tuna, egg, and tomato sandwich for lunch, there was one day in which the main part of my meal was two tomatoes and a melon slice. Quiche and cheese filled croissants were common for lunch, but to the relief of myself and my program coordinator, they have evolved from serving a green salad every meal . My host mother is wonderful at making our food without the meat or making something specifically for me, a great relief of my initial worry of its affect on my home stay. My experience with the food here made me want to look in to the life of a vegetarian in France (without all the assistance I received!)

What I discovered researching on the internet was incredibly interesting. A large population of France does not have much choice in becoming a vegetarian as it is law that schools, hospitals, retirement homes, and prisons are required to have animals products in all meals with meat at a specific frequency. I found the blog of a woman living in France with a young son who decided he wanted to become vegetarian. When she went to the school to discuss alternative foods, she was told that vegetarianism is not a recognized diet and it was required that they serve him meat, he would have to eat around it. I cannot even imagine trying to maintain a vegan diet, as what doesn’t have meat almost always has other animal products.

I decided to ask my professor how difficult it is to be a vegetarian in France, and she told me that it is nearly impossible. There is some meat (pork and poultry are very common!) in basically all foods. The school and families work hard to work with vegetarian foreign exchange students, but if they were not so vigilant, it would be very difficult to maintain a healthy and balanced diet as a vegetarian in France.

While there are a great many things I love about France, and as sad as my upcoming departure will be, I must admit that I am extremely excited to return to home where it is easy to maintain my vegetarian diet!

Maggie

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