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This is a guest post from Jeremy Geiger of AlmostFit.com.
When it comes to food, exercise, and our obsession with obesity, the French appear to break all of the rules of Western thought. By and large those who live a traditional French lifestyle eat for pleasure and satisfaction, they often smoke, and they drink regularly. Despite a diet proportionally high in things like saturated fats, the French have remarkably low rates of heart disease and obesity. Welcome to the French Paradox.
What the French eat
On a visit to Paris with my wife and 7-month old son (which I’ve written about on Almost Fit), I experienced this firsthand. When you walk the streets of Paris, you are tempted with the most sensual culinary delights imaginable: Delicately handmade pastries, beautiful chocolates, freshly baked bread from ovens that have been used for sometimes hundreds of years, full fat, unpasteurized cheeses, and crepes. And that’s just what you can see in the window displays. When you see overweight people in Paris, they are almost never Parisians; in fact, in my experience it was the easiest way to identify my fellow Americans!
Those who practice a traditional French lifestyle seem to break our most commonly accepted dietary notions. They typically:
- Consume 60% more saturated fats than we do in proportion to our overall intake, primarily through dairy. This includes rich cheeses, real butter, whole milk, and yogurt.
- Do not eat low-fat products or use chemically derived sugar substitutes.
- Eat fresh bread daily that is made from refined white flour.
- Regularly consume both lean and fatty meats including pork, duck, beef, chicken, and a few others (someone hide Mr. Ed), as well as fish.
- Drink alcohol with lunch and dinner, and the alcohol is often unregulated. Meaning, where we have a soda fountain, they may have a cask of wine available for refills.
- Smoke cigarettes. (In fact, in Paris, if you want to show that you are an American, ask for a non-smoking section in a restaurant, but be prepared for an uninterested response.)
- Eat late at night — much later than we do — often eating heavier foods for supper at around 9 or 10, followed by a dessert course.
- Do not go to the gym (The reasoning being why waste your life in such a way, when you could be enjoying it?) or exercise much more than we do.
- Do not obsess about the chemical composition of the foods they eat, and they do not rely on science to tell them what is good or bad. That is what Mother is for.
All things in moderation
With all of this dietary rule-breaking, the French simply should be dying off like flies from heart disease. I mean after all, high fat foods? Simple carbohydrates and sugar-filled deserts? Cigarettes and alcohol? No Stairmaster for three hours a day? According to our experience, our science, and our gigantic devotion to every product and approach we can turn our eyes to, their collective hearts should all be congealed, seized up like French-made Peugeot diesel motors full of hardened, varnished sludge.
The truth is that the French typically live three years longer than we do, with only an 8.3% rate of heart disease, and a low occurrence of obesity (though sadly this is increasing as Western ways infiltrate French daily life).
So how do they do it?
According to folks like Dr. Will Clower (The French Don’t Diet Plan), Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food), and Mirielle Guiliano (French Women Don’t Get Fat) — and place me squarely in this camp, by personal experience — it comes down to this: The French simply eat real food in moderation. They eat good food, just less of it. They generally don’t eat the overly-processed, low fat, low carb, hydrogenated chemically substituted well-preserved food-based products that we do. Dr. Clower’s catchphrase: “If it’s not food, don’t eat it.” Michael Pollan? “Eat food. Not Too Much. Mostly plants.”
A little bit of Paris in Portland
How can you implement the French approach? What do the French do that allows them to eat what they want, when they want, and still not gain weight?
Here is a list based primarily on the writings of the three authors cited above. Of course, their books provide much more detail on the scientific (and anecdotal) evidence that supports the effectiveness of these ideas, and provide specific techniques on how to implement them. Here’s a sample of the guidance they provide:
- Identify honestly what you eat, think about it, and make changes very slightly and gradually. Remember that you are changing these dietary habits for the span of a lifetime, so they have to be simple, livable adjustments. From Mireille Guiliano, “The answer to weight gain is never dieting.”
- Eat only real food, not processed food alternatives or “faux foods” or food-like products (particularly high fructose corn syrup).The good news is this means you get to eat butter, bread, and chocolate again.
- Eat for the pleasure of eating, rather than as a means of fuel. Treat your mouth more like a sensory tool and less like a Flux Capacitor.
- Eat at regular times. In France, they maintain a social stigma against between meal snacking. In fact, many of their cars do not have cupholders.
- Eat seasonally, locally, and shop several times a week. And as Michael Pollan says, don’t buy your fuel at the same place your car does.
- Don’t rely solely on “Nutritionism” to tell you what is good for you; use common sense, and eat real foods. If Great-Grandma wouldn’t recognize it, don’t eat it. This is a simplification here; read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan for a much deeper explanation for the dangers of relying on science and industry alone to tell us what we should eat.
- Your dietary emphasis should be on green leafy vegetables, or animals who are fed those vegetables.
- Eat fat! But eat the right kinds, particularly dairy and naturally occurring fats in plants (think avocados not corn oil). In fact, the lack of fat intake may be one of the root causes of many of our health problems like heart disease and diabetes.
- Quantity does not equal quality. Buy the best you can afford, and be willing to spend a little more (although I’ve found that the cost levels out when you’re eating less).
- Train yourself to eat less by enjoying your food more, eating slower, putting less in your mouth per bite, and eating for sensory pleasure. Realize that portion size has grown 3 times what it was 50 years ago!
- Don’t eat mindlessly or be distracted when you’re eating by things like television or the computer.
- Incorporate wine into your diet — in moderation.
- Don’t stuff yourself. Learn the often forgotten feeling of fullness with practice and patience. For example, eat half of what you normally would, and wait for half an hour. If you’re starving, you know it wasn’t enough. If you feel physically good, that is the feeling of being full. Practice identifying that feeling, and it becomes second nature with time.
- Try to get all of your nutritional needs met through whole foods rather than supplements whenever possible. (There is an ongoing, raging controversy as to whether supplements actually have much benefit out of the context of the whole food from which they were derived.)
- Learn to cook, and make time to do it. We often say that we don’t have time to cook, but in reality in the last 15 years most of us have somehow made 2-3 hours time for other things like surfing the Internet. It is ultimately a matter of choosing our health as a priority.
- Make ethical choices in what you eat. Develop a relationship with what you put in your body, how it affects you, and your choices impact the environment. This is an interpolation of the French diet in a sense since it is not a conscious concern of theirs, generally, but in a world of genetically modified foods and questionable shortsighted farming practices, it helps you to identify “real food.”
- Don’t view your weight or your choices as a pass/fail situation. View it as a commitment to improving your life over the long haul.
All of these steps, for me, boil down to this: Eating real food in moderation simply works. It may very well be the solution to the French Paradox.
Jeremy Geiger (a.k.a. Metroknow) writes about his changes in lifestyle to reflect the French approach to eating on his site, AlmostFit.com. So far this year, he has lost 22 lbs by making only minor changes, eating real foods, and exercising only moderately (if at all, in the dark days of the Oregon wintertime). For more information, see his Web site, AlmostFit.com.
Mac
29 responses so far ↓
1 brad // Jun 6, 2008 at 9:20 am
I live with a French woman, and can vouch that much of this is true.
The first time we visited her family, I was struck by how slowly everyone eats, largely because everyone’s talking so much. Lunch would begin around noon and end around 2:30. Supper would begin with appetizers around 7 and wrap up with dessert around 11pm or midnight. Of course this was in part because we were visiting so we had special meals, but even everyday meals last longer than most Americans are used to. Shops in many parts of France are closed for two hours at midday for lunch. And when you eat slowly, you tend to eat less.
I do sometimes wonder if French people as a whole tend to have faster metabolisms than other people — my girlfriend tends to be very high-strung and exciteable, and if she doesn’t eat enough she loses weight with alarming rapidity. She quit smoking many years ago and we only have wine on the weekends (occasionally we’ll have a glass during the week), and she still weighs only about 85 pounds. Her ex-husband is equally thin and equally high-strung, as is their daughter. She eats nothing but junk food, eats a half-stick or more of butter every day, shakes vast quantities of salt on almost everything she consumes, never exercises, and weighs even less than her mother. I have to assume there’s something genetic going on.
2 brad // Jun 6, 2008 at 10:39 am
I should clarify that the “she” in the second-to-last sentence above refers to my girlfriend’s daughter, who lives on a typical North American teenager’s diet but stays rail-thin. My girlfriend and I eat a much healthier and more varied diet, lots of vegetables, but still a lot more meat and fat than I consumed when I lived on my own.
3 Maria - Never the Same River Twice // Jun 6, 2008 at 10:48 am
After spending time in St. Barts, I can definitely attest to this. Nothing beats a breakfast of cafe au lait and chocolate croissant!
I would also add that the French (and Europeans in general) tend to walk much more than Americans. It’s okay to have a little butter on your fresh baguette when you’re getting 10,000+ steps per day.
4 LisaN // Jun 6, 2008 at 10:56 pm
What you don’t see in this article is what has so invaded the American diet, fast food and processed food. I totally agree with your assessment, but in the era of “Super-size me,” a hazard not only for the fast food, but the large portions, is it possible for Americans to live this lifestyle?
I hope so……………….:)
5 brad // Jun 7, 2008 at 4:18 am
Definitely possible for Americans to live that lifestyle; it just requires that you cook more of your own food (from scratch) so you can regulate ingredients and portions. I work long days and generally put in at least 6 hours of work on weekends, yet we eat out only three or four times a month. All other meals are made at home, from scratch. I do almost all the food shopping and cooking. It’s a bit easier for me since I work at home, and because we only watch about three hours of television a month, so that gives me more time and flexibility. But I don’t think it’s that hard to fit a healthy made-at-home diet into a busy schedule.
My experience in France is limited mainly to Brittany and Alsace, but my impression is that the “eating out” culture is strongest in Paris and other big cities. Everywhere else, people mainly eat at home and prepare their own food. When I met my girlfriend, she was reluctant to eat out, and going out to a restaurant was a Big Event, something that might happen two or three times a year.
I live near an Italian section of my city, and there are very few Italian restaurants there, but plenty of Italian grocery stores. That’s because most Italians are expected to eat at home; to go out to an Italian restaurant would be an insult to mama’s home cooking.
6 Kim Steele // Jun 7, 2008 at 7:02 am
I don’t think the French have non-smoking sections in restaurants anymore because as of January 1, 2008 it became illegal to smoke in cafes, hotels, restaurants and discoteques. What a horrible way to stay skinny!
Brad, I believe your right that there is a genetic factor involved. The French, both women and men, are not just on the whole more slender than their North American counterparts, they are definitely smaller framed. Also, the nervous French woman may be a caricature, but I have found it to have some truth.
I am not French, but I do live in France, and I have never had a weight problem here. I have happily adapted to what a lot of people do here - they ENJOY their food (and I think this naturally extends into enjoy your body). Eating fat free cheese is not enjoyable and neither is eating too much Chevre!
Jeremy - I found all your ideas about eating to be really sound. Thanks!
7 elisabeth // Jun 7, 2008 at 8:42 am
I just wanted to second Maria (#3); not exercising doens’t mean not moving a lot more than most of us in the US!
And, while I want to admire Michael Pollan more than I do, I do live in the Midwest where corn is not the enemy — and I think he betrays his age — I know some Great grandmothers who do offer koolaid and twinkees as food!
8 metroknow // Jun 7, 2008 at 11:35 am
@Lisa: Hi Lisa! Is it possible? Yes, without question. I’m doing it successfully with a family of 4, and I am definitely not the “granola” type. We live in the Portland metro area, so we are surrounded by convenient options as well. And I am definitely a product of the Fast Food generation, complete with cravings for super-sized fries and buckets of soda. But I’m successfully avoiding it, even with a family of 4.
That said, it’s been a long time coming…A couple of years ago I would have completely balked at the thought. But now, it’s already becoming second nature (I believe).
One update to this article: I’ve now lost 26 lbs for the year, and I’m still eating bread, butter, excessively delicious cheeses, I made sticky buns last weekend, bacon, whole milk, and the list goes on. Of course, I’m also eating a lot more vegetables too; and of the good things, I am eating less of them. And, fast food, high fructose corn syrup, and J.D.’s favorite - Snoball snackcakes - are out for me. Well, 99% of the time.
@Maria and Elisabeth: You are right I believe; It is certainly part of the cultural picture. Because a traditional French lifestyle includes things like 2+ hour lunches, it is culturally acceptable to simply walk further to get to that favorite spot. Not to mention, if you live in Paris, driving and parking are a real drag; you are much better off spending an extra half hour walking to lunch than trying to find non-existent parking. Interestingly the same can be said in New York; people walk more, in general, but are not generally more healthy than most Americans (I don’t believe - I’d LOVE to get information on whether there is data that proves that is not the case). So while the walking aspect is certainly a key piece, without the cultural shift in our relationship with food, my feeling is that the health benefits of walking more are lessened greatly. If you still snack a lot, on junk, and then supplement that with overeating at each meal, walking more is not going to balance it out.
On a tangent for a second, on two hour lunches: what is most interesting to me is that their level of productivity is not measurably different than ours; those daily, significant breaks mean they are recharged in the afternoon and are very possibly more productive than we are in those periods (there’s an inflammatory statement if I ever heard one!). It kind of follows Tim Ferriss’s reasoning that J.D. highlighted on GRS a little while ago - adding in time for yourself makes you more effective, whether it’s Tim’s “mini-retirements” or the daily opportunity to completely put down the task for a couple of hours in favor of a walk to lunch, at which you contemplate the shapes of the passersby rather than how in the world you’re going to fit in that new people management task.
9 Rachel // Jun 7, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Totally agree with this post as we’ve traveled all over Italy and their diet is relatively the same and everybody is thin. They really do enjoy the food, wine, and company. It seems our culture in America is completely different and the fast food nation doesn’t seem to know how to change.
10 J.D. // Jun 7, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Between Jeremy’s article and our dinner with Pierre, I was reminded of how much I love eating like that. I’ll get in the habit of doing so for a couple weeks, but then something happens and I fall back into my rut: I eat out of a can, or I eat big portions, or whatever. Because our culture doesn’t emphasize slow grazing, I forget about it. That’s too bad because slow grazing is where it’s at!
11 Andy // Jun 7, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Great article, but one gripe
The French might object to being told their ways aren’t “Western”. As a European, I’d suggest that the word you’re looking for is “American”, when discussing life changes that increase the incidence of obesity. (Said partly tongue in cheek)
12 Metroknow - AlmostFit.com // Jun 7, 2008 at 8:41 pm
@Andy - What’s funny is when I first started writing about this, I used to say “American”, but the more reading I did, the more I realized that the problem is not unique to American culture - it’s everywhere - not unlike Starbucks and McDonalds ;). Basically I settled on the term Western because heart disease, diabetes, and obesity are commonly referred to as the “Diseases of the West”.
But I suppose France isn’t exactly the Far East either…
— Anyone have thoughts on a better term? I’d love to find one! 
13 Andy // Jun 7, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I get what you’re saying. I’m not trying to America-bash (hey, I live here and love it). But I do notice a big difference in body shapes between here and the UK/Ireland.
It’s really so hard to eat healthily in the Midwest. The standard grocery stores are full of processed junk (Fritos-topped casserole is a legitimate meal here), with tiny produce sections. It takes education and determination to avoid all that; most people don’t think about what they eat.
So, I’m not so sure what the best word would be. It’s a small detail.
14 Andy // Jun 7, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Oh, by the way, @ your previous comment: I’ve also lived in NYC. My strong impression was that people are generally much less overweight there. You guys live in Portland, though. The Midwest is, I suspect, much worse off than the coasts.
15 Metroknow - AlmostFit.com // Jun 7, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I think you are right on the ease of things here - I know that living on the West coast, near major cities generally, has made the transition much easier. The Pacific Northwest in particular has a vast array of local resources and quality-conscious options, often at reasonable prices. It’s kind of a cultural thing here in Portland, although we still have some great options like Voodoo Donut that are, well, simply necessary indulgences. (At the risk of being banned from GetFitSlowly…You have not lived until you’ve had a fresh, warm maple bar with a strip of bacon on top.
)
That said, I have found much like one of the comments above suggested, that we are eating at home more and more, making our own foods from scratch. My most read post to date is on making artisan bread in 5 minutes a day (http://almostfit.com/2008/05/07/can-you-make-artisan-bread-like-this-in-only-5-minutes/) - I’ve been doing it for a while now, and it has become a trivial daily task that I enjoy (at a savings of nearly 3 bucks a loaf). That may be one of the biggest keys to eating well in areas that are not generally conscious of the downside of industrially produced foods. Cooking from scratch requires more time of course, but it is well, well worth it.
16 Week Roundup Week of June 08 | Health, Fitness, Exercise, and Weight Loss (47 pounds in 7 weeks) // Jun 8, 2008 at 5:22 am
[...] at Get Fit Slowly this week: Food, Drink, and Decadence: How the French Stay Thin. The key word is moderation, moderation, [...]
17 greenman2001 // Jun 8, 2008 at 6:53 am
JD: If you were to eliminate all processed food from your diet, what foods would be on that list? What percentage of the calories you take in come from processed food?
Elizabeth: corn (or, more properly, federal agricultural policy that encourages the planting of corn) is very much the enemy. It drives the production of cheap, processed food, which Americans are gorging themselves on. Believe me, I’m a believer in personal choice, but it’s not in anyone’s interest to offer a cheap bottle of booze to an alcoholic. Cf. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
JD, I’d love for you to unpack the statement, “something happens and I fall back into my rut.”
18 April // Jun 8, 2008 at 7:10 am
This lifestyle is true of Italy, too. We were there for over two weeks and I swear I stuffed myself silly, yet I came home a pound lighter. We walked everywhere, though, and that made a huge difference.
We completely changed the way we eat after that trip. You are definitely satisfied with less when its quality, and when you take time to enjoy the meal.
(Unlike the Europeans, though, I’m still going to workout. I actually like lifting weights!)
19 Back From Vacation, Work To Do (and Some Health Links) // Jun 8, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[...] the links: Food, Drink, and Decadence: How the French Stay Thin - A guest post from Almost Fit writes about the French and how they stay fit when they should have [...]
20 Ros // Jun 8, 2008 at 9:20 pm
There was a Cornell study from February 2008 on the subject and their research boiled down to this: “French people eat until they’re full, Americans eat until the food’s gone.” http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/22/french-people-eat-un.html.
I totally cracked up when I read that phrase because it’s so true (at least for me anyway). My mom always made me eat everything on my plate growing up, regardless of how small I was or how disproportionately large the portions were. Worse yet, we were threatened with no desserts if we didn’t finish our plates clean. Talk about forming bad habits early on. It only makes sense that my “fullness meter” is skewed because it was never properly calibrated! 
Yet another thing to blame on my parents.
21 When (eating) in America, do as the French do « Treading Softly // Jun 9, 2008 at 7:43 am
[...] June 9, 2008 · Filed under Books, Food, Self-improvement · Tagged Books, eating, Food The “French paradox” is something that’s been recognized for a while now - that is, the French eat much more fat than we do, but weigh less and have lower rates of heart disease. It’s mentioned in the book In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan, which I just read this weekend. This is one that I may actually buy to keep for myself. There’s also an excellent post on it today at Get Fit Slowly, http://www.getfitslowly.com/2008/06/06/food-drink-and-decadence-how-the-french-stay-thin/ [...]
22 Linda // Jun 9, 2008 at 8:47 am
You didn’t mention that when shopping several times a week, the French walk or ride a bike to the bakery, the butcher, the vegetable market. This is just as important as what you eat. They don’t exercise by going to a fitness center, they incorporate it into their daily life.
23 metroknow // Jun 9, 2008 at 8:56 am
@Ros - I think that study was the one where Brian Wansink used an automatically refilled soup bowl to demonstrate that as long as the bowl was filled, people kept eating? He has done a lot of really interesting “real world” experiments like that, with fascinating (and practical) results.
That is definitely one of the keys - serving yourself less in the first place! My habit has become to serve myself literally half of what I would normally see as a “reasonable” portion, then eat it slowly, knowing that I can go back if I need to. 9 times out of 10, I don’t need it.
24 brad // Jun 9, 2008 at 12:03 pm
@Linda: my experience in France is that while shopping by foot certainly happens in the towns and cities (which tend to be more walkable than most modern American towns and cities), plenty of French people live too far from their food sources to walk. It’s not so different from here, really. A lot of people live outside of town and have to drive to do their shopping; and there are big American-style supermarkets with big parking lots just like you see here.
25 sir jorge // Jun 9, 2008 at 2:20 pm
wow, that is a world of difference from how we do it here in the states
26 Miguel Wickert (Pineiro) // Jun 11, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hey Bro, solid advice and tips. I agree, with everything for the most part.
You really hit the nail on the head when you said, “it comes down to this: The French simply eat real food in moderation. They eat good food, just less of it.”
A lot of people need to unlearn bad habits and advice given by those so called “experts.” This task is not easy and will not happen overnight.
Maybe we can all be apart of the change that seems to be occurring; as people are looking for answers to their health related problems.
Excellent post my friend. I’ll help to get the word out about this post.
27 thomas // Jun 11, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Good post!
just rectifying the smoking French cliche :
As well, there are 12 countries in Europe alone that smoke more than France. 40% of the Greeks, 37% of Austrians and 27% of Europeans overall smoke.
The French: between 25% and 20%, depending on the source.
At the most, that’s only 4.1% more than Americans (20.9%). In fact, Frenchies smoke less than the people of Tennessee (27.6%) or Kentucky (30.8%).
Source : http://superfrenchie.com/?p=1004
28 Charles // Jun 11, 2008 at 2:47 pm
As you said, obesity is growing in France and has been for quite some time. I don’t know if it necessarily has anything to do with “western ways,” I would say that it has to do with lifestyles and personal choices.
Lots of people in the west go to gyms and just exercise in general, how many other countries have people that go somewhere specifically to get in shape? I can’t imagine people stopping by the gym in Nepal, yet in the west it is a common occurrence.
29 website design // Jun 12, 2008 at 7:06 am
As the article states (in a fairly shrouded way) obesity is growing in France and has been for quite some time. I don’t know if it necessarily has anything to do with “western ways,” it has to do with personal choices. People get fat because they make the choice to eat when they don’t need it.
As you certainly know, our bodies only need so much to function on a day to day basis. When people eat more than they actually need, they are going to put on weight. It’s a personal and individual choice that a person makes to be overweight, in my opinion. Just as it is when they make the decision to drop the excess weight and get healthy again.
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