why french women don't get fat

The French government is concerned about a coming obesity epidemic in France. Google it.

Le grand secret dévoilé: French women tend not to get fat because they don't eat and they smoke.

They also live in a society even more sexist than the U.S.

Coffee, cigarettes, and anorexia.

HA tell that to the many skinny girls I know, some of whom are trying to GAIN weight because they are so skinny and who do none of the above. That explains some people but definitely not most.

I guess this applies to anyone regardless of their nationality or ethnicity. Its just happens that French women usually gets the stereotype as the most "skinny" people in the West but they're no different from other Mediterranean people. There are also overweight French women.

I'm french, we have fat people just as you, LESS, because :
- we don't have a McDonald every 2 meters
- serving sizes are not the same
- we have a gastronomical culture that promotes healthy meals

appart that, there are a lot of fat people :-)

It's like the idea that French women all have perfect skin. It is a country hugely obsessed with women's appearance. In general they spend a vast amount of time getting treatments, for instance it is quite normal after giving birth to go to a thalassotherapy spa for a week (without the baby) to kick start the weight loss. It is quite normal to use lunch hours having anti ageing treatments too. How many English or American women do that?

Also having a culture of eating well, don't mean eating a lot. It is expected that on a date, women don't eat much and just pick at their food daintily. French (and Italian for that matter) men don't particularly like women putting away as much as they can.

Banning trans fats – whose nutritional value is sometimes compared to putting "melted tupperware on toast" – would save thousands of lives, researchers say today.

The UK should follow the example of New York, California, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria and implement a ban on the hydrogenated vegetable oils whose main selling point is that they are cheap, experts from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Public School of Health, Boston, US, say.

Trans fats – also known as trans-fatty acids – are found in cakes, pastries, pies, biscuits, snacks and fast foods. They are formed when liquid vegetable oil is turned into solid fat in a high temperature process called hydrogenation, and, as well as being cheap, they extend the shelf life of products that contain them.

Even a 1 per cent fall in use of the fats, as a proportion of total daily calories, would prevent an estimated 11,000 heart attacks and save 7,000 lives a year in England alone. Consumption of trans fats in developed nations ranges from 2-4 per cent of total calorie intake, they say.

In New York, voluntary efforts to reduce their use failed, but when they were banned in 2007 the proportion of New York restaurants using trans fats fell from 50 per cent to less than 2 per cent. (Some trans fats occur naturally so they cannot be totally eliminated.) Fears that trans fats would be replaced with saturated animal fat, which is also bad for health, have proved unfounded.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dariush Mozaffarian, assistant professor of medicine, and Meir Stampfer, professor of epidemiology at Harvard, say removing industrial trans fats is "one of the most straightforward public health strategies for rapid improvements in health".

A ban would save lives, be easy to implement yet have no impact on the price, sales, taste or availability of the affected foods, they say.

Several British supermarket chains, including Marks and Spencer and Waitrose, have phased out trans fats, as have some food manufacturers. The New England Journal of Medicine published a scientific review of trans fats in 2007 which said that "from a nutritional standpoint, the consumption of trans-fatty acids results in considerable potential harm but no apparent benefit".

The Food Standards Agency said consumption of trans fats in the UK was down to 1 per cent of total energy intake on average, half the maximum safe level recommended by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition.

The Agency reviewed the safety of trans fats in 2007, including the legal bans introduced in Denmark and New York, and concluded that saturated fat found in meat, butter and milk posed a bigger health problem because of the larger quantities consumed. Efforts should be focused on reducing consumption of saturated fats, it said.

The Food and Drink Federation said the BMJ editorial did not contain any "population intake levels" and "could give rise to unnecessary health concerns". Barbara Gallani, the federation's director of food safety and science, said: "Artificial trans fats have been virtually eliminated from processed foods in the UK.

"Intakes are at even lower levels than shown by previous surveys – reportedly 0.8 per cent – well below the recommended maximum of of 2 per cent of food energy. The UK Government has recently concluded that trans fats at these levels do not pose health risks to UK consumers, an opinion with which we concur."

Victoria Taylor of the British Heart Foundation said the reduction in trans fats was good progress. "But we still need to do more to make sure that the industrially produced trans fats don't creep back into our nation's diets."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/ban-trans-fats-and-thousands-of-lives-will-be-saved-uk-told-1946458.html

I live in France and they do get fat. But not on average, not fat like Americans can get fat. It's very rare to see someone morbidly obese in France. They are getting fatter though. Then there is the other end of the spectrum and I suspect there are quite a few eating disorders around here. A lot of Parisian women get buy on a yoghurt and cigarette or coffee (or both) for lunch and they are not American size yoghurts!

One thing I would say though is that the French in general eat a much more varied diet than most Americans (again, this is in general as obviously there are French who live on potatoes and meat and Americans who eat very healthily). Eating a varied diet is very important here and in terms of meats and veg, we tend to eat a lot more different kinds than you would see elsewhere. If you have chicken for lunch, you won't have it again for dinner or even the next day very often. And most French will sit down to a hot meal at lunchtime and dinner. And they sit down. They wouldn't think of eating at their desk! Children have between 90 minutes and 2 hours off for lunch every day and a lot still go home for a hot lunch.

So overall, I think there is a much healthier attitude towards food and eating.

Why people don't get fat - they burn more calories than they eat. If you've ever seen a slim person pack away the fatty food and wonder why - it's because they are either eating less at other times of the day (eg, they may not eat all day and have one large meal at night) and/or they are active / have a high lean body mass and thus a faster metabolism.

Saying that.. principles such as "eat slowly" "stop eating when full" and "enjoy your food" are good ones that I like to adhere to anyway.

An interesting article here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15901351
The actual survey data is here - http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-24112011-BP/EN/3-24112011-BP-EN.PDF

The UK has more obese women than any other country in Europe, according to European Union figures.

Data agency Eurostat, which looked at 19 countries, found nearly a quarter of UK women - 23.9% - were recorded as being obese in the year 2008 to 2009.

Just over 22% of UK men were classed as obese, coming second only to Malta.

A person is defined as obese if their body mass index (BMI), the result of a calculation involving weight and height, is above a certain level.

The BMI correlates fairly well with body fat.

Statisticians found the share of overweight and obese people increases with age in all of the 19 member states that data was available for.

The data come from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) and was published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Its figures for the UK were based on data from England, although surveys suggest the percentage of obese adults in Wales and Northern Ireland is similar and Scotland's latest health report put the figure at 28%.

After the UK, the countries with the highest levels of female obesity were Malta, with 21.1%, and Latvia, where 20.9% fulfilled that criteria.

Meanwhile, after Malta and the UK, the countries with the highest instances of male obesity were Hungary - where 21.4% fall into that category - and the Czech Republic, where 18.4% are classed as such.

Obesity levels were also found to be low in Italy, Bulgaria and France.

In Italy, 9.3% of women were found to be obese and 11.3% men.

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria levels of obesity for women and men were found to be 11.3% and 11.6%, with levels of France identified as being 12.7% and 11.7% respectively.

The figures suggested that the proportion of women who are obese or overweight falls as the educational level rises.

Last month, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley launched a bid to reduce obesity levels in England by 2020.

The minister said people need to be honest with themselves about how much they eat and drink.

He said that, overall, Britons should be eating five billion fewer calories a day than at present.



So I guess the real question should be - Why Romanian Women do not get Fat

It is a fact that there are fewer obese people in France than in the UK and US, but it doesn't have the lowest rates of obesity. In developed countries, obesity is strongly correlated with levels of inequality - the bigger the income gap between the rich and poor, the fatter people tend to be.