French children don't snack

I don't usually take pictures of my food.

Butto understand French portions you can take a look at this restaurant. I go there often. You can see pictures and videos of their portions, they're tiny. And in other restaurants its the same.

http://www.lestablettesjeanlouisnomicos.com/page-the-cuisine-113.html

'Walking a zillion miles is nice, but it won't prevent muscle wasting.

Wha?

Goodness, How DID our ancestors manage without dumb-bells. Ya know, DUMB-bells.

See what I did there?

Did you miss the part where I said that most of the world still does tons of manual labor for a living and that makes it less of a problem? Do you think our ancestors didn't do anything but walk? (they were busy carrying tons of crap, climbing trees, building shelters, etc.) Or perhaps, that people dropped dead a lot younger for most of human history? Not to mention that lots of prehistoric populations were hunter/gatherers and ate as much protein as they could get their hot little hands on, which I'm sure wasn't nearly as much as I can get.

I'm wondering, since they do not snack, if their meals are generally larger or the same size (at least compared to the American diet, I mean healthy portions). I know that I eat smaller meals when I snack during the day. I wonder if I was in France and remove the snacks if my meals would be the same size or larger.

Just a thought. Thanks for sharing the interesting article.

I am a dedicated snacker. I don't wait until a socially approved set time to eat. I eat when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm no longer hungry. I've never been overweight. That's probably because although I snack frequently, I don't gorge like a pig at the trough when I do it.

I'm curious to know about the average body composition of (typical) French people. Walking a zillion miles is nice, but it won't prevent muscle wasting. How do they maintain a decent amount of lean body mass not lifting weights? And they can't possibly be eating 5 servings of fruit/vegetables a day and a decent amount of protein with all the calories they're eating from bread, cream, butter, and full-fat cheese. Not to mention the alcohol and cigarettes!

I suspect that the truth may be that "(Most) French Women Don't Get Large". That's not enough for me.

Do you realize that not everybody in the US lifts weights, and that only a very, very small percentage does? So most of the US people, and most of the people in the world for that matter, must be a bunch of muscle wasting zombies if they don't follow the MFP "lift heavy" mantra.

That is why virtually all body composition formulas take age into account. It's not just muscles, it is bone density too. And when you generalise, you reach "those 20-somethings" or words to that effect that keep popping up on this forum. Even personalised it might be "when I was younger I could..." and some of us have goals along the lines of being able to do something as good as (or better) than when we were younger.

So, to avoid generalising humanity, just did a quick check.

Chinese: "Values for body composition were different when compared with studies in the Caucasian population. In both sexes, height and lean mass decreased in a linear fashion with aging. In men, total body water increased till the 55–65 age group and then decreased. In women, total body water and bone mineral content also decreased with aging in a linear fashion." http://www.aggjournal.com/article/S0167-4943(97)00026-5/abstract

Japanese: "Longitudinal data suggest that arm and leg LTM decreased markedly in men in their 70s, and leg LTM had already decreased in women in their 40s." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23809775

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcopenia "Even Master class athletes who continue to train and compete throughout their adult life, exhibit a progressive loss of muscle mass and strength, and records in speed and strength events decline progressively after age 30."

I wouldn't use the word "zombies", but it is probably safe to assume several billion people are losing lean mass year-on-year.

ETA: Not sure how to clarify my sentence about body composition formulae. Some formulae and body composition testing methods don't take age into account to reach the results (e.g. Bod Pod) but instead do that when the results are interpreted (e.g. "Research has shown that a moderate, natural increase in body fat with age occurs in many individuals. To account for this natural increase, % fat values provided in the Body Fat Rating table on the BOD POD test print-out sheet should be viewed as recommendations for adults 18 years and older, with the values being adjusted upwards by possibly 3-5% fat for older adults."). Others methods take age into account to reach a BF% using the same assumption (e.g. with the Accu-Measure callipers you take the mm of your skinfold and look at the chart - older you are, more internal fat is assumed).

Butto understand French portions you can take a look at this restaurant. I go there often. You can see pictures and videos of their portions, they're tiny. And in other restaurants its the same.

Absolutely.

I spend a fair amount of time in France, Spain and Belgium and going back a couple of years when I had a different job, I spent a fair amount of time in Finland. You simply don't see as many obese people (anywhere near) as you do in the UK or US. Culturally I've always noticed the following:

1. France: yes they use so-called 'unhealthy' fats (cream, butter, cheese) but they have them in tiny portions and they eat a lot of fresh veg.
2. Belgium: frankly if you were sedentary you'd be the size of a beachball because their cuisine features lots of meat, frites (which is where they originate from, NOT France) and beer. However they all cycle a lot and on a weekend you see families all together, outside walking, playing sports or going around in some pretty odd 4 person bicycles
3. Spain: cuisine changes massively by region and local ingredients; in-land areas pork, chicken and rabbit feature heavily and on the coast seafood and fish. Regardless there's tons of vegetables.

In all the above the striking thing is that food is a social activity - the evening meal is generally pretty late (in Spain it's common to see families with young children out in restaurants at 9-10pm) and it's eaten together.

Now Finland is scary in it's health levels and I found that seeing an obese person there was a pretty rare occurrence. But what's interesting about Finland is that in the 80s it was a fat and unhealthy nation...but instead of getting worse as the UK/US has done, they've turned it around and have half the obesity levels of the US. How? Well they legislated their way out of obesity by:

1. They changed their farming subsidies: in meat/dairy production they rewarded protein content rather that fat content and they put payments in fruit/veg growing.
2. School meals are free and nutritionally balanced (no pizzas, fries etc). There are no vending machines in schools.
3. Money was ploughed into the creation/maintenance of local sports activities and elderly people are given free spiked shoes or walking poles to encourage them to get out and walk in lower temperatures.
4. The Government funded large-scale competitions pitting town against town in such things as which town could see the best improvements in cholesterol levels or smoking cessation

I checked with my friend Sabine (she is Belgian but her children attend school in France) the kids have two programmed snacks one at 10 am and the other at around 4 (in after school care, but still at the school they attend)- which seems about right to me (as it is more or less the same here in Belgium)

oh and eating at 7? that is for the children, the adults usually closer to 8-8:30; which does seem consistant with restaurants here in Belgium, which often only open again for dinner as from 7 or 7:30 - so even if there at 7 your dinner would arrive earliest at 7:30
interesting thing abou that is although our Belgian restaurants open at "French" hours, the average Belgian household has dinner around 6- I have a theory (based on no research whatsoever) that the further north you are (in Europe) the earlier you eat dinner (my Madrid, Spain friends often have dinner at 11pm or midnight)

In general I dislike stereotypes,like racial or national. Whole load of stereotypes and generalisation bout French women being thin and how they do it, how the children is etc... nah, I don't think we can make the generalisation, i bet there are plenty of women in france with a weight problem.

My children never snacked either. We taught them to stay out of the kitchen except for getting water, and to wait for meal times to eat. They never developed a snacking habit. Pretty much the exception at our house is popcorn if we rent a movie to watch. I do snack since I'm tracking calories though, because sometimes I just want somethings sweet so I'll grab a yogurt cup or fiber bar mid-day.