Moving To France
This great article, sent in by Shannin, explores why the French live longer and are slimmer, in spite of the fact that they don't diet, go on Atkins, or cut back on the creme brulee. Turns out, it may be part of the culture.
"Food experience. Now there's a phrase. Compare our 'food experience' to that of the French: the time that the average British family takes to prepare a meal has shrunk from two hours to 15 minutes in the past few years. And, while we are speed-eating, cramming in a Kingsize Mars before the lights turn green, the French are taking smaller mouthfuls, resting their cutlery between bites, discussing the food - often because it is worthy of discussion."
"Food experience. Now there's a phrase. Compare our 'food experience' to that of the French: the time that the average British family takes to prepare a meal has shrunk from two hours to 15 minutes in the past few years. And, while we are speed-eating, cramming in a Kingsize Mars before the lights turn green, the French are taking smaller mouthfuls, resting their cutlery between bites, discussing the food - often because it is worthy of discussion."
posted by mo pie at 9:47 AM
9 Comments:
Some good points in that article about portion control and eating good food rather than junk. But most of them smoke - smoking is worse for you than being overweight.
It's not just in France that portions are smaller--I went to Thailand a couple of years ago and one of the things I liked most about the food there was that not only was it mostly fresh, but the portions were, to an American, shockingly small--until you actually ate a few meals and realized that it was *just* enough food to satisfy your appetite but not over-fill you. And always served with more vegetables than we expect here, which were clearly meant to be eaten and enjoyed as part of the meal, not as a discarded "garnish." I think we've just forgotten what a reasonable size portion really is; and, although we eat out more than ever before, we still expect restaurant meals to be heavy on the "treat" side of food--high impact, low nutrition.
Coming from the other side of the Pacific, I'm always shocked by portion sizes when I travel in the US.
I am overweight and I still can't finish the gargantuan amounts of food you are served in restaurants over there. Not only that, getting good vegetables can be difficult (depends on the city you're staying in) and they often arrived drenched in butter or salad dressing.
I once ordered pasta with a basic marinara sauce because I wanted something simple and light for dinner. The serve that arrived was the size I would put in the middle of the table to serve my family and there was a layer of oil floating over the top of the sauce.
It was disgusting. (And this at a good hotel in LA.)
I generally come home after an extended stay in the US and just want a steamed head of broccoli as soon as I get off the plane!
Wow- that is such a rude commentary on the US that I hardly know where to start. Sure there are larger portions over here- uh, just don't eat it all- and you can actually ask for your vegetables to be served anyway you deem fit- without butter or sauce- and hmmm- I have lived in many, many cities in many states and have always had access to fantastic vegetables and fruit. Strangely enough- I just had steamed broccoli for dinner and gasp- I live in the United States!!!
I read that article when it was in Observer Food Monthly. Two things really annoyed me about it - one was as someone's already said, nearly all the women smoke. There was even a quote from one to the effect that French women smoke rather than eat. Course, we'd all rather have emphysema than be obese, right? The other annoyance is that all the women they spoke to seemed to be of the same 'type' - well off, chic, urbanites. It's like all those other articles about how French women are so better turned out/better dressed/just better than us scuzzy Brits at at everything. They always seem to be speaking to chic Parisians. I do wonder how representative they are of the lifestyle and experience of all French women ...
Ladymisstree's comments might strike "Anonymous" as rude, but they are on target. Why should we have to always make it a special request in U.S. restaurants just to get a vegetable that isn't drenched in salad dressing or butter? And why are our American portions embarassingly large? "Anonymous" flippantly suggests that Ladymisstree just not eat the whole portion she is served, but even that's a challenge since it's been proven that the more food you are presented with, the more food you eat. It really takes a committed effort to not eat until you've finished most of a restaurant plate. "Anonymous" might be insulted, but it's simply true that the American food industry (retail and restaurant) encourages overeating. We sell it to each other and we buy it.
Yes! Great article. My blogging partner, Steffany, e-mailed it to me, too, and I thought it was fabulous.
I read a similar article in Marie Claire a while back, though, about an American woman and a French woman trading diets for a month. The French woman had to eat fat-free processed foods. It was all what we consider "diet" foods. The American woman ate butter and olive oil and wine and butter and mushrooms. And guess who lost weight? The American woman. The French woman gained.
It just goes to show the processed fat-free foods are NOT the way to lose.
I don't think it's unfair to critique the American restaurant/grocery/diet industry. These industries exist to make an enormous amount of money off a population that is growing ever fatter. The food we Americans have easy access to is shite, full of chemicals, pesticides and fat, and expensive to boot, and I'll tell you from experience that I've had to go to a lot of trouble to learn to how to prepare and eat a healthy diet in America. Yeah, I grew up thinking that a whole economy sized bag of Doritos was a single serving, and getting out of that kind of thinking takes real work.
If the French weren't so damned, you know, French, I'd think about relocating, just to save my arteries and my waistline (if not my lungs).
On the whole, I'd rather try to eat the way the French claim in this article that they do.
Anybody remember the infamous USDA Food Pyramid? That remarkably uninformative graphic that intructs us all to have so many "servings" of this or that each day without showing exactly what a "serving" is? Some time ago I went rambling around the Food Pyramid site and finally found out what exactly they mean. And guess what? The servings our very own United States Department of Agriculture came up with are the same size as the portions routinely served at each meal in France.
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