French children don't snack
Replies
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What is the fascination/myth with the French being thin?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9612225/Number-of-obese-people-in-France-doubles-to-seven-million.html
Their obesity rates are rising also.0 -
I feel sorry for French children.
I snacked the entire time growing up. I remember a time in my teens when I drank a gallon of whole milk a day. I became overweight during a brief period in my 30s. The only things that I changed after that are how much I eat and how much I move.
The relentless comparison of national habits and diets is getting to the point of absurdity. We already know what causes obesity. We already know what a healthy diet looks like. There are many roads to Rome. Pick one.
I think the idea that French people don't snack, or don't eat large meals, is a myth. It wouldn't surprise me if the French are generally more active than Americans.
I'd like to see a study of the correlation between how much the average French person smokes and how much they weigh. Cigarettes burn 10-20 cals each after all.
All I saw in France was a lot of people smoking and not eating. I'd rather not smoke, eat and exercise, but whatever floats your boat.0 -
@beach
'Discussion' does not necessarily involve being condescending or rude. Although it can. Where do you get off calling someone a 'bored housewife'? Get off here and go back to your 'roids, you misogynistic f*ckwit. I suggest you find somewhere else to go and exercise your MASSIVE ego. Loser.
No offence,
All the best. x
In to massage BeachIron's MASSIVE ego.
Mmm-Hmm.
I call second.
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What is the fascination/myth with the French being thin?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9612225/Number-of-obese-people-in-France-doubles-to-seven-million.html
Their obesity rates are rising also.
How interesting you should bring that up! Here is an article on that from the New York Times. looks like they are snacking more nowadays after all. Oh, and more fast food too. :bigsmile:
EVEN THE FRENCH ARE FIGHTING OBESITY
PARIS — Doctors here are perplexed by the runaway success in the United States of the best-selling advice book "French Women Don't Get Fat."
"Oh, but they do!" said Dr. France Bellisle, a prominent obesity researcher here. "I work in a nutrition department where we see lots of people who are overweight. And I can tell you that French women are getting obese - and some massively obese - these days."
In fact, France is suffering something of an obesity crisis, with rates here rising "at an alarming rate," particularly among young people,Bellisle said.True, absolute rates are still lower here than in the United States and most other European countries: 11.3 percent of the French are obese and nearly 40 percent overweight, compared with more than 50 percent overweight in Britain and the United States.
But the sudden sharp rise - 5 percent annually since 1997 - is causing great alarm in a society renowned for thinness, a country that long seemed exempt from a worldwide epidemic of obesity.
In March, Jean-Marie Le Guen, a Socialist member of Parliament who is a doctor, proposed wide-ranging legislation to combat his country's expanding girth. "We are confronting a major public health problem," said Le Guen, author of "Obesity, the New French Disease," which was just published and is one of many new books on the topic.
Germany, Italy and England are also battling serious obesity problems, but the issue is particularly striking here because, until recently, the slenderness of the French has been so mythic that some scientists theorized that it must have genetic roots.
****In fact, in France, as in much of the world, the culprit is changing eating habits, experts said, as France's powerful culture of traditional meals has given way to the pressures of modern life. The French now eat fewer formal meals than they did just a decade ago and they snack more. Another cause is the rising availability in France of fast food and prepared foods, which tend to be higher in fats and calories.*****
Food companies say that France is one of the most promising international markets for prepared items like frozen pizza, as well as for outlets like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, both of which are planning to open dozens of new stores in the country this year. Perhaps predictably, sales of Weight Watchers products, introduced to France in 1992, are also booming; it now sells 3,000 tons of frozen food annually.
Doctors here say that the French are unusually susceptible to the invasion of convenience foods since their culinary traditions insulated them for so long.
"The rise in obesity is probably a result of the fact that the French don't understand how to eat properly with commercial food, since they have never had to do it before," said Dr. Jean-Michel Cohen, a nutritionist and author of "Understanding Eating."
"We need to teach them how to use supermarket food to put a balanced diet together," he said.
In the past, the French shopped mainly at markets, green grocers and butchers, and they prepared two leisurely, formal meals a day, Cohen said.
Now kids eat at school. Workers lunch at their desks. Vending machines selling candy and chips are plentiful. There are far more supermarkets and frozen food emporiums in Paris than in Rome, for example.
The average French meal has decreased in length from an hour and 22 minutes in 1978 to just 38 minutes today.
"My mother would never eat this, but for me why not? It's good and simple," said Sophie Merol, a 26-year-old in jeans eating a breakfast of pastries and coffee at a McDonald's on Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle in Paris, an avenue where bistros alternate with pizza and burger joints.
Although such fare is not exactly light, neither are staples of the traditional French diet like bread and chocolate, pâté and cheese. How could the French eat all that and never tip a scale?
Some anthropologists theorized that the French were thin because France had never experienced prolonged famine, and so there was little genetic pressure for having a bit of extra fat.
In her book "French Women Don't Get Fat," Mireille Guiliano, a French-born executive who now lives in New York, attributes her own slimness to traditional French meal culture, which she suggests infuses in women an appreciation of healthy diet, exercise and the discipline to consume smaller portions.
In theory, researchers heartily agree. But, they say, that way of eating is no longer the French norm, and no longer practical, either.
As for Guiliano, still svelte at nearly 60, they suggest there may be more going on.
"Educated women have less of a tendency to get fat in any culture," Dr. Bellisle said. "They have the financial means to buy the right food and the right clothes, which is a big incentive to stay thin."
Cohen said France was losing its "common food culture." When he and his colleagues filmed French families at dinner, they were appalled. The family meal was punctuated by television and time on the phone, often with only one shared course. After that, each person would rush off for "self-service desserts" like yogurt or ice cream, rather than remaining together for fruit or cheese.
Where wine or water used to be the only drinks served, soft drinks and fruit juice were now common. Ketchup was often the first thing set on the table.
As tastes and rituals changed, demand was created for fast food, snack foods and frozen food. The Swann Company of Marshall, Minnesota, one of the world's leading producers of frozen pizza, said that France and Germany were now their best overseas markets.
"It used to be impossible to find food outside of meal times," Bellisle said. "Now home refrigerators are full of it, and you can find pizza and burgers all night."
Fast-food companies say that French still use fast-food restaurants differently than Americans, going out for a whole meal as a family; they have tailored their offerings accordingly. But the success has been phenomenal.
"We are now opening our KFC restaurants in the provinces and consistently beat our own European records in terms of customer visits every time we open a new one," said Christophe Lecureuil, head of public affairs for Yum! International, its parent company. "We plan to have 100 restaurants by the end of 2008, as the concept is proving very successful."
In his book, Cohen pointed out that the baguette, the traditional long French loaf, was low in fat compared to supermarket bread, which was really bread and butter. But he noted that a Big Mac was actually healthier than some traditional French items like quiche lorraine.
The government is now trying to reverse the weight problem.Le Guen's proposals include better food labeling as well as nutrition education and exercise programs at schools.
But treating obesity and related diseases is already a €10 billion, or $12.8 billion, industry, according to Inserm, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research. Noting that obesity levels in France have doubled in the past 10 years, Michael Mullen, European product manager For Weight Watchers, said: "The market in France is growing and we believe it has an excellent future."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/world/europe/03iht-obese.html?pagewanted=all&_r=00 -
Wow. Who knew trying to have actual intelligent discussion, and not just swapping anecdotes based in nostalgia, could cause such hostility?
Oh wait this is MFP. Discussions are discouraged and baseless fear mongering and nonsense are par for the course.I'm accustomed to it. It amuses me at this point. It does baffle me though as to why people would enter into threads like this and not expect discussion and disagreement.
[/quote]@beach
'Discussion' does not necessarily involve being condescending or rude. Although it can. Where do you get off calling someone a 'bored housewife'? Get off here and go back to your 'roids, you misogynistic f*ckwit. I suggest you find somewhere else to go and exercise your MASSIVE ego. Loser.
No offence,
All the best. x
[/quote]
Wow! I've gotten in good enough shape that someone thinks I'm on roids. I'd call that success!
Oh. The reference was to the author of the article, not the OP. But meh. Reading comp and all.0 -
[/quote]
Wow. Who knew trying to have actual intelligent discussion, and not just swapping anecdotes based in nostalgia, could cause such hostility?
Oh wait this is MFP. Discussions are discouraged and baseless fear mongering and nonsense are par for the course.
I'm accustomed to it. It amuses me at this point. It does baffle me though as to why people would enter into threads like this and not expect discussion and disagreement.
@beach
'Discussion' does not necessarily involve being condescending or rude. Although it can. Where do you get off calling someone a 'bored housewife'? Get off here and go back to your 'roids, you misogynistic f*ckwit. I suggest you find somewhere else to go and exercise your MASSIVE ego. Loser.
No offence,
All the best. x
Wow! I've gotten in good enough shape that someone thinks I'm on roids. I'd call that success!
Oh. The reference was to the author of the article, not the OP. But meh. Reading comp and all.0 -
There are few absolutes in this world, healthy eating habit is not one of them. However, what the average French is doing is clearly better than whatever the average American is doing, the obesity statistics support it. Can you lose weight by snacking? Yes you can. Can you gain weight by forbidding snacks? Yes you can do it as well.
We all count calories here, so we know it's possible. If you want to eat 3-4 substantial meals a day, there's little or no place for a typical 200-300 calories snacks. If you eat 6 times a day, then you'll be hard pressed to include a typical 500-600 calories meal. Just do what works for you.0 -
This is interesting. And not because it's degenerated into a squabble.
I'm not one of those people who go around saying "the man" is plotting against us to make us fat. But think about this: we have a TON of ready-made, individually portioned snack foods in the US. You would think that one only needs a little something if one gets peckish between meals. But in fact these snack foods are pretty caloric combos of salt/sugar/fat, and they are the kind of thing that you could hanker for even if you weren't actually hungry. There are companies making an awful lot of money selling these expensive snacks. So they get sexier and sexier, and yummier and yummier, and more are sold. And it's a "diet" thing if these cookies are portioned out in 100-calorie packs. Granola, granola bars, trail mix -- were designed for people climbing mountains. Gatorade was invented for college football players at practice and games. Why do our kids need this stuff just to shuffle between one chair and another? And even so, the 2013 versions of granola bars and Gatorade are about a million times yummier than the ones I grew up with in the 1980s.
How many of these kids would snack if the snack was always either plain bread or an apple?0 -
@beach
'Discussion' does not necessarily involve being condescending or rude. Although it can. Where do you get off calling someone a 'bored housewife'? Get off here and go back to your 'roids, you misogynistic f*ckwit. I suggest you find somewhere else to go and exercise your MASSIVE ego. Loser.
No offence,
All the best. x
In to massage BeachIron's MASSIVE ego.
Mmm-Hmm.
I call second.
I hate to burst your bubble, here, but it has been well documented that the relationship between the sizes of ego and genitalia is one of inverse proportionality. :-/
Not according to the pics his wife sent me.
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There are always these stories of what what country or another does as though this is the answer to what we as Americans are doing wrong. But when you look at various countries or cultures, you see people doing many different things and maintaining good weight and good health.
I don't believe you can tease out one aspect of a culture and say, aha! that's the answer! Most cultures evolved for hundreds if not thousands of years; they're made of multiple factors that fit together like gears. Then you have to factor in differences in human biology. Is the Mediterranean diet better for everyone, or just people of Mediterranean descent? How about the Japanese diet, a completely different way of eating? Unfortunately, we don't yet have the science to definitively answer many questions about optimal diet or even about weight loss.
There are probably cultures that do a lot of snacking and that have lower obesity levels than the U.S. Doesn't necessarily tell us much, unfortunately.0 -
Americans don't typically eat four meals, either. If you put all of a child's-- or an adult's-- normal-sized snacks together, you'd probably end up with the fourth meal that this tale describes. Of course, some people might snack more than that fourth meal, but not those who are eating healthily otherwise. Snacking isn't the cause of obesity. What and how much we're eating is. It doesn't really matter when you're eating as much as what.0
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I totally agree! I have been reading a lot about this for adults also. That is why many French women are so slim, They use smaller plates, eat slower, eat fresh foods, they don't go back for seconds, they don't deprive themselves of nothing, they eat for pleasure enjoying every bit! They eat what they want all in perfect moderation, French women avoid anything that demands too much effort for too little pleasure..French women don’t eat “fat-free,” “sugar-free,” or anything artificially stripped of natural flavor. They go for the real thing in moderation. French women don’t often weigh themselves, preferring to keep track with their hands, eyes, and clothes: “zipper syndrome.
French women typically think about good things to eat. American women typically worry about bad things to eat. I am an American with a French born mother. I need to adopt the French way.0 -
Certainly what has changed since I was a child is that I see friend's children no longer ask if they can have something... They just go into the kitchen, open a cupboard, take a bag of crisps or whatever and go upstairs.
I was expected to ask if I could have anything between meals and if it was too close to a proper meal the answer would usually be no. And "no" meant no! It would have been completely unacceptable and rude just to take something without asking.
There were only 2 fat girls in a class of 30 when I was in school, and I guess by today's standards they wouldn't be considered fat.
These points you've made are exactly the same conversations I have with my mama frequently. I since read in a later post that you are German - my family is Polish - so it makes sense that you have a similar viewpoint. We often discuss why it is I have such a trouble with losing weight or maintaining weight. I was the fat kid in primary school, but I was one of five in our class of 30. When ma was at school in Poland, there maybe were 5 for the whole year level (90 kids).
She also brings up the idea that there was no morning or afternoon tea at school, something she struggled with here in Australia. Given that main meal of the day was at "lunchtime" there was no need to eat more food. "Dinner" was a lighter meal in the early evening. If it was enough time between meals then the snack was carrot or apple. But only if I asked for something, never just to help myself.
Overall this has been an interesting thread to read and I've enjoyed seeing everyone's different cultural perspectives on eating routines. My ma will be gloating it up when I tell her she's not the only one to hold onto ingrained cultural food habits from the old country. :bigsmile:0 -
My brother and I snacked a lot, and were thin. My kids snack a lot and are very skinny. I snack often now, and have never been overweight.
Correlation =/= causation0 -
As originally mentioned, French children have "four meals." So I think it is the types of food and quantity you eat that make a difference.0
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There are always these stories of what what country or another does as though this is the answer to what we as Americans are doing wrong. But when you look at various countries or cultures, you see people doing many different things and maintaining good weight and good health.
I don't believe you can tease out one aspect of a culture and say, aha! that's the answer! Most cultures evolved for hundreds if not thousands of years; they're made of multiple factors that fit together like gears. Then you have to factor in differences in human biology. Is the Mediterranean diet better for everyone, or just people of Mediterranean descent? How about the Japanese diet, a completely different way of eating? Unfortunately, we don't yet have the science to definitively answer many questions about optimal diet or even about weight loss.
There are probably cultures that do a lot of snacking and that have lower obesity levels than the U.S. Doesn't necessarily tell us much, unfortunately.
Very well said.0 -
Sorry, "Le Goûter" is French for "the snack".
In my family and all over Québec it is called "la collation", which etymologically gives you more of the sense that it is something happening "between meals".
Just because you plan it out doesn't mean it isn't a snack, and there are plenty of fat French kids these days, btw. Actually, I saw one just the other day at the hot spring. And I'm in Japan at the moment.0 -
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/dining/where-all-paris-can-be-found-indulging-in-the-afternoon.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
"They don't snack, of course.".....0 -
I'm from New Zealand and as kids my sisters and I snacked because we were extremely active - I swam 20 hours a week, my sisters did ballet (12 hours/week) and artistic diving (5 hours). When I stopped swimming I stopped snacking. Many of our friends also snacked but didn't exercise, and they were much bigger than we were. These days I live in Germany and people here don't snack much either, and in comparison to NZ they are less overweight. This was a really interesting article, thanks for sharing!0
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I lost 6.5 lbs on vacation in South America this summer. Why? No snacks. When in Rome...0
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Ive ate a few times with french people and they take a billion years to finish their food maybe thats their secret?0
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I'm from Germany and I very rarely snacked. When I worked as an Au Pair in the US after finishing high school, I found it funny that my kids snacked so very much and also that you can buy everything in snack size, for example raisins. You wouldn't find that here.
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I spend quite a bit of time in France and can say the OP's opinion is generally true. There is bit of snacking creeping in with changing work habits, stressed mothers etc, but generally there is a much better attitude to eating. The meal times are sacrosant and activities are scheduled around them, e.g. football games, theatre productions. On a French beach everyone clears off for lunch, leaving it blessedly free for the foreigners to enjoy. We used to go down at 12 when all the French were trailing back to their hotels, tents etc. When they picnic they do it in style with tables, chairs. Even if they stop by the roadside they get out the equipment.
Having said that there is a downside. French women are obsessed with their weight - at least the bourgeois ones are, not so much in the countryside. It is a crime to be overweight. Therefore many more middle class, middle aged French women SMOKE than in the UK. Inevitably if you sit at outside at a cafe a smart, middle aged French woman will sit herself next to you and light up. It has got to the point where we almost never sit outside to eat or drink. This is much less common in in England where I hardly know any middle class women who smoke. Or men. The French believe smoking keeps them thin.
I do applaud their no snacking policy though, but as I said, things are changing. It is often a socioeconomic thing with work life and family life being disrupted so fast food has crept in.0 -
Why is our culture constantly being compared to others? If I wanted to live like the French, I'd live in France.0
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I don't believe snacking is necessarily causing obesity (there are healthy snacks, after all), but I do think kids in the US are overfed all day long. When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, we only snacked in the summer or after we'd been outside burning a lot of calories playing. And I always asked permission before taking something from the pantry. Even then, I was only allowed 1 or 2 cookies. And sometimes, none at all, if my parents thought I'd had enough that day.
We never ate in the car, unless it was a long road trip. You waited until you got home to eat. And we certainly never ate in stores. Nowadays, every kid I see in a store has a sippy cup and a baggie of goldfish or something like that. Cars are full of crumbs and spilled juice boxes. It seems that parents are shoving something in their kids' mouths all day long. They come to expect it, and I think it carries over when they get older and never get out of the habit of grazing all day long.
This is purely anecdotal, but when I lived in Japan 20 years ago, they never ate in the subways of out on the streets. To walk and eat was considered bad manners. Westerners often broke this rule and the Japanese seemed a bit horrified by it. Times may have changed by now, though.0 -
Not snacking is becoming the fashion in the nutritional world too.....next it will be only eat when you are hungry! It is all common sense really isn't it......but being surrounded by food ...loads of it unhealthy...makes that hard to do!!0
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We never used to eat snacks as kids. We'd have 4 meals a day, breakfast, dinner, tea, supper. We never snacked on sweets, fruit, crisps or anything. Fruit was eaten during meals as a dessert. It was only when we started getting pocket money as we got older we started buying our own snacks. That was our choice what to spend our money on. Of course we wanted the snacks because we saw all our friends snacking. Who knows if we'd have still bought snacks if people around us didn't buy them.0
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I am just wondering how the French have such rigid set times for meals........ do all jobs over there start and finish at the same times of the day, no shiftwork etc?0
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There is no point but the discussion that the post elicited is clearly at odds with your own cherished beliefs? Carry on with the amazing cultural discoveries of bored Canadian housewives who just got back from their first foray into another culture and have decided to stop snacking.
That's not "discussion" that's just being superior, condescending and rude.
When resorting to patronising people like this, you've just shown that you have nothing meaningful to contribute.
Nice out of context quote. That was in response to the OP's repeated assertions that this thread was not meant to elicit discussion and debate on the diet and weight loss benefits or costs of snacking, even though I was among several who appropriately interpreted it in that manner. And yes, that is my honest opinion about the article cited. It is common clap trap written by someone with little experience with cultures other than her own. The same piece could have been written by the myriad other 1 year expats I've met over the years. A good number seem to get absolutely enthralled with their adopted (and temporary) culture and spend countless hours posting on FB and other places about their "discoveries," rather than accepting that they're not Marco Polo in China. In terms of a serious piece on cultural exploration and/or nutrition it is seriously lacking.
If we are to discuss the snacking habits of the French, then perhaps we should be discussing the significance of their snacking or not snacking. My own experiences in Japan and HK over several years seemed to indicate to me that people eat different things, in different ways, and still manage to stay thin and healthy. People have different customs. No surprise there. As I said before, I seriously doubt snacking is significant, especially in light of the fact that we already know that meal timing doesn't matter and that what truly matters is total calorie consumption. How you get to your daily calories and nutrition needs is up to you to decide for yourself, and everyone else to decide for themselves. If they want 1 meal a day, or 4, it really makes no difference except in terms of whether it keeps a specific individual on track for their calorie count that day. For me, there are days that I eat 1 meal, most days where I eat 4 (including a snack), and some days where I eat 6. There are plenty of successful body builders who believed for years that one must eat at least 6 times a day, and if you look on here, you find plenty of others who swear that intermittent fasting with 1 daily meal is essential for their success.0 -
This article is quite true: as a child in France, normally you're not supposed to eat snacks between meals (usually 4 a day, however kids usually have a snack to eat at school around 10 am).
It's true but doesn't mean that our diet is particularly healthy, we do have very unhealthy habits including:
- having cheese + dessert after a meal
- cooking habits with lots of cream, butter, etc. Alcohol with dinner, etc
- I think sport/working out is not a big part of our culture as in the US (but we don't use the car as much...)
- people do eat lots of fast food now, soda with dinner for kids, etc
Anyways, there is no point in trying to get habits from other countries. Just use your own habits and make it better.0
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