The Solution to Growing French Weight Problems … Be French!

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The Solution to Growing French Weight Problems … Be French!
The French are famous for their sumptuous crème brûlées, fresh baguettes, and lingering late-night meals.  Notably, all of these signature elements are dietary sins in our American dietary culture. Proponents of low-fat eating positively cringe at France’s famous Poulet de Bresse à la Crème. Doctors advising the new low-carb craze wag their fingers at the daily baguettes. And all Americans scratch their heads at how late the French eat (not to mention the length of their meals—whatever would one do at the dinner table for two hours?). Why? Because the French break all of our dietary rules, and yet the World Health Organization recently reported their obesity rate at 14%. Their heart disease rate is 3-fold less than that of Americans according to the Lyon Diet Heart Study, and their life expectancy rates are higher for both men and women. All this, while serving butter (not margarine) on their baguettes and eating full-fat cheeses (not low-fat processed cheese food products) at every meal. My American misconceptions about the French diet cleared up after being awarded the Chateaubriand Fellowship to work as a neuroscientist at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences in Lyon. I moved with my family to a home in Meximieux, just outside Lyon, to live for about 2 years. There were many cultural shocks in store for us, but the food was not one of them. We expected sumptuous, delicious, wonderful dishes and we were certainly not disappointed. But, based on our standard American dietary training, we felt the French should all be gigantic and heart-diseased, saved only by the clever healthcare tactic of keeping the cost of wine cheaper than Coca-Cola! It took no time at all to see that our assumptions were just flat wrong. In fact, when my family and I returned home after two wonderful years of this giddy culinary seduction, everyone had lost a considerable amount of weight. “What about all that cholesterol?!” my pudgy friends preached from the dietary pulpit. A blood test on my return told my doctors that my cholesterol levels indicated an unusually low risk of heart disease, despite my dangerous love affair with French cheese, daily wine, chocolate, and that unique blending of dietary uncertainties, the buttery croissant. After returning home, the problem became as clear as the solution was obvious. The French linger over foods that actually taste, well, delicious. Moreover, the pleasures of the palate leave them with low weight problems, less heart disease, and longer lives than Americans. So instead of choosing among our carnival of diet theories, schemes, and novelties, I developed The PATH to advise Americans on the lessons of the French table. If we distill the rules of the French Diet into two basic sections, it would be what to eat, and then how to eat it. What to eat At the recent summit of dietary gurus, hosted by ABC’s Peter Jennings, the leaders of the low-fat, low-carb, Zone, and Weight Watchers diets all niggled over the exact ratio of fats to carbs to proteins that should comprise our diets. But the thin, healthy French don’t do this. They apply one rule that is as powerful as it is simple: eat food. “Cheese food product” is not a food, nor are the hydrogenated oils of margarines—bacteria won’t even eat them! Low-carb bread? That’s an oxymoron! And can you imagine the mainstream French opting for egg substitute to enrich a Béchamel sauce? No, all these invented products are designed to mimic food, but they are what I call “Faux Foods.” If you would eat like the French, first make sure that the foods you choose are real, not Faux. Secondly, you must choose high-quality foods. Your body knows what to do with the apple in a Tarte Tatin but has never seen the chemicals in a fruit roll-up. Cheddar goldfish are not a dairy product, and gummy worms … who knows what that is? The first rule of eating French? Eat real food. How to eat it The second rule is just as important and is vastly overlooked by the American community—that is the “how of eating.” As any French people would tell you, eating well is not just about the molecular composition of the food on your plate. It’s also about the manner and process of your eating. Put simply, the French dine—Americans feed. If you are eating low-carb, and you gobble like a ravenous animal, you will overeat. If you are eating low-fat, and you gobble like a ravenous animal, you will overeat. It’s not about the food, it’s about your habits of eating. The typically French habit of enjoying the meal at a leisurely pace is critically important for controlling weight problems. It takes some 15 minutes or so for the chemical signals from the gut to reach the brain and tell you when you are full. If you eat in 10 minutes, the body does not have time to signal to the brain that you are satisfied before you have already become stuffed! And stuffed, along with acid reflux, is a particularly American condition. Thus, the second rule of eating like the French is to love your food enough to take your time with it. Making the French Diet work for us in America Perhaps the hardest part of applying these intuitive French rules of eating is not WHAT to eat—Americans are constantly being told which foods to avoid. The harder of the two is HOW to eat, because we habitually rush here and there to squeeze a bit more out…
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