Diets

Interesting article here about how the French manage to cram their diet with wine, cheese, and cream, and still stay slim. The obesity rate there is very small – only 11 percent of French citizens are obese compared to 22 percent of the UK and more than 33 percent of Americans.

I liked this observation:

"Researchers in the US once spent months looking into why the French remained so much slimmer than Americans. After intensive study, they came to a remarkable conclusion.

It was because the French ate less."

You can blame all kinds of things – the way people in the UK (and, I guess, the USA) eat on the move rather than taking their time, the way we eat too many convenience food rather than fresh produce, our addiction to fast food. And I know there are all those diet books and diet aids that often promise “Get slim – and eat as much as you like!”. The result is inevitable.

I hate diets. Most people I know who go on diets usually put weight on! – either during the diet or soon after they’ve come off it. And most people who diet go from diet to diet, in search for that elusive key to weight loss they think they’ll find there. But simply eating less must be the key ingredient.

The current obsession with celebrities – either their anorexic bodies, or the gleeful photos of any miniscule bulges in their waistlines – is a terrible thing, which does nothing but feed the greedy diet industry. It makes me want to devour six bags of chips a night just to spite them, but in my early forties, I’m at an age where I can no longer eat what I want (the way I used to) without putting weight on. I’m never going on a diet though.

One intriguing postscript from the article:

“Guess which country is home to McDonalds' most profitable franchise? Not the US, not Britain, but France - now due to reach US obesity levels by the year 2020.”