Recently, I have came across an interesting article in the Guardian about the so called French paradox.
Despite a diet stuffed with cream, butter, cheese and meat, just 10 per cent of French adults are obese, compared with our 22 per cent, and America’s colossal 33 per cent. The French live longer too, and have lower death rates from coronary heart disease - in spite of those artery-clogging feasts of cholesterol and saturated fat. This curious observation, dubbed ‘the French paradox’, has baffled scientists for more than a decade.
Whereas the French typically spend two hours over lunch, Brits bolt down their food in the time it would take the French to butter a petit pain. Nutritionist Dr Francoise L’Hermite believes that the French secret is to sit down with friends or family for a meal, and to eat three times a day at regular intervals. She points out that the French don’t eat in front of the television, and they eat slowly, enjoying both the food and the company. How very civilised.
‘For France, a meal is a very particular moment, in which you share pleasure, the food as well as the conversation,’ says L’Hermite. ‘From an Anglo-Saxon point of view, food is just fuel to give energy to your muscles. If you have no pleasure in it, you are breaking all the rules of eating.’ Eating in France is a social activity.
One French girl writes - In my first six months in Britain, I gave lots of dinner parties. But then I stopped as I soon realised that no one appreciated the trouble they took. British people seem to love fried things. In Britain, I often see girls who are chubby and whose hair and skin is in bad condition. In central France, you might see this in agricultural communities among the men, but you wouldn’t see it in general. None of my French girlfriends look this bad. There seems to be less of a pride in oneself in the UK. This can be seen not only in your approach to diet, but also in alcohol consumption. In France, there’s no culture of going out to get drunk. I drink a lot, but never to the point where I would vomit or fall over. It is ugly and vulgar to end up in a drunken mess.
