French children don't snack

Allterrain_Lady

Nothing like generalisations........

Lol. Yup, you brits never generalize when it comes to those frenchies.
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And of course, that wasn't a generalisation! But I get where you were going with that. And entirely agree with your original post. I've lived in France, and stay with French friends on occasion. The way of eating is ingrained. And anyone who 'feels sorry' for the French not snacking doesn't need to. They have a very healthy attitude to food. They partake in 'proper' meals (IMHO), which include everything in moderation, and generally in the right proportions. A visit to a patisserie is regarded as a treat- that is to say, it's not something eaten on the go, or in the car- they sit down and enjoy it as an occasion- the same way they do do a tea or coffee. Food is something they take very seriously (along with a lot of things, and there's my little generalisation about the French! ). We can learn a lot from their culture, as we can from many cultures.
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Generalize away. :happy:

As far as the patisserie and the healthy attitude....you mean they eat sweets other than on their cheat day?! Gasps.
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Edit: I don't seem to "quote" properly, sorry!

Hi! An insight from France here. Born and raised in Paris, even though I've been living abroad for 5 years.
You got it right. Adults don't snack because food is a serious issue for us. It's about sharing time with your loved ones and really enjoying what you're eating.
If we buy something as a treat we don't eat it on the go. We take time to make it worth the calories. A piece of pie with a magazine in my sofa is sooo much better than in my car or walking.
We don't have to keep our kids for snacking several times a day. It's like they're born with that knowledge. A kid above 5 years old who trows a tantrum to get a snack after he's been said no to is considered real impolite and the poor parent is going to be frowned upon by the people around her/him for not being able to raise their child properly.

Don't get me wrong, it's a cultural thing that doesn't preserve french people to get bigger and bigger. French food is rich and the main meal is dinner. So no time to burn what you eat at 8.30pm.
The 'French woman don't get fat" is a myth, sadly...

BeachIron

@beach You've been all over the forums today ramming your opinions down everyone's necks. Enough!

Give it a rest, dude!

Peace out.

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.

Oishii

Very interesting. Giving up snacks is one of the key points
in the weight loss advice I give. But I had no idea that eating
snacks is a cultural thing, and that in some cultures -- at least
in France -- snacking is very minimal. Does anyone here know
of other cultures in which snacking is not customary?

I am not positive, but I believe this also holds true for some other european mediterenean countries like spain and italy. Also, I believe some asian countries, like japan. Please jump in though to verify or correct me though.

Japanese children snack all the time. Conbinis are on every corner, sometimes 2 on a corner. Conbinis are convenience stores full of snacks. There's also vending machines about every 100 feet or so. The Meiji candy company is one of the biggest in the world. They also have some of the most unique flavors of doritos and potato chips you could imagine. Half of the grocery stores are snack aisles. The problem is not snacking. Americans and Canadians are fatter than the French, who are in turn are far fatter than the Japanese. The problem is overconsumption, not timing of consumption or what is consumed.

I managed to gain weight in both France and Japan, but I don't blame the food. Japanese snack food is in such tiny portions, and Japanese people must, in the main, stick to those portions, unlike me. In France I was eating daily what many French people must eat less often (croissant, pain au chocolat aux amandes).

As for not snacking in France, my French exchange definitely snacked. Before I met her it had never even occurred to me that it was possible to eat a whole packet of cookies in one go. She would find any way she could to eat more than her mother would allow. Snacking was a form of disordered eating for her, I believe. My other French exchange may have had an ED, as she refused to eat at mealtimes and compensated by eating whole baguettes.

So, maybe it's a good thing most French don't snack, but a generalisation always has exceptions, and the pressure around food and weight in France isn't always healthy.

Allterrain_Lady

the pressure around food and weight in France isn't always healthy.

You have no idea!! You're supposed to stay thin and healthy while being able to eat wonderfully tasty calories loaded food three times a day.
Because it's "part of the culture"!

Bry_Fitness70

Being pretentious and snooty burns off those excess calories, so I don't know why they refrain from snacking...

Jordanad79

According to the article (and granted, I just skimmed it) - it sounds like it claims that French children eat 4 meals per day? And I believe someone else said she was from Ukraine and grew up in a similar fashion. My question is - what's the difference between 3 meals per day and a snack vs. 4 meals per day (I'm assuming at least one of these meals is snack-size). Just curious...

Snacking may indeed be more foreign in European countries, but who knows... I spent a summer in Poznan where we were given meals - 3 per day. Breakfast and the 3rd meal (supper? dinner? I don't remember the difference) were smaller meals, while the larger meal was usually served around 2pm. I recall having a huge problem going straight from 7am-2pm without a snack. Eventually I started bringing a piece of fruit to my classes in order to tied me over. My Polish language instructor thought I was strange.

Snacking might be an issue, but I think it's probably a combination of over-indulging and lack of movement. I didn't gain weight until I began a Master's degree in my mid 20s. Suddenly I was sitting all day and just reading, while continuing to eat the way I always had which, of course, including snacks...

_SABOTEUR_

@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.

Francl27

I'm French, and it's mostly true, but you got to look at it this way... French kids start school at 3. It's pretty much always from 8.30am to 4.30pm. They don't have snacks in school, so they have one when they get home (gouter... which really is a snack!). And we have dinner later over there, as most parents work until 7pm or something... often at 8pm.

So I don't think it's quite accurate to say that they don't snack, because the 4pm meal is a snack. And as far as I'm concerned, it was very rarely healthy things (often croissants, puddings, cookies etc). And as I grew up the 4pm thing kinda went out of the window.

But again, I was a fat kid, what do I know. And I'm quite sure I gained 5lb last time I went to France. The food is just too good to pass up...

Achrya

@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.

Nerdybreisawesome

I was a fat kid with a rail thin mom who didn't allow snacking. We ate Breakfast and Dinner and a small dessert. I went to friends houses and they had snacks. I found it weird.


Also, how come a small meal that is pre-planned is not considered a snack to some of you? I always thought a snack was a small meal, be it junk or heatlhy, preplanned or not.

_SABOTEUR_

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.

_SABOTEUR_

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.

_SABOTEUR_

@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.

Mslmesq

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=0

BeachIron

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

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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.

BeachIron

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

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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.

Hexahedra

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.

michelle7673

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?

_SABOTEUR_

@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.

mahanaibu

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.