The French Secret

There’s a very good, funny article in the International Herald Tribue about the French Paradox, one which points at the one of the French Ssecrets to a slim figure is smoking like a chimney. Here a taste.

According to major surveys from both nations, the percentage of French women who smoke is five points higher than the percentage of American women. Researchers have dismissed this difference as statistically insignificant.

A stark gap emerges, however, if you compare elites from both countries. In America, where cigarettes now have a loser image, only about one-tenth of those with college and graduate degrees smoke, compared with about 40 percent of high school dropouts. But in France, nearly a third of upper-income earners smoke, a slightly higher percentage than in the lower classes.

So those chic uppercrust French women trotting around not getting fat smoke far more than their American counterparts.

The writer, Jessica Siegel, is also quick to note that French beauty Catherine Deneuve credits chain-smoking as her beauty secret.

Of course, we here that French Secret would never recommend a three-pack-a-day habit as the sure course to svelteness, beauty and well-being.

Here’s a link to yet another article about the French paradox. This one, by Dr. Andrew Weil, notes that the key to the French diet is quality, not quantity.

[W]ithout a doubt, the French do enjoy their food. Although they are picking up some of our bad habits, they still take time to enjoy food with family and friends. They have no guilt about indulging in really good meals and getting full pleasure from them. The French eat much less processed food than we do and generally have access to higher-quality ingredients. Their food - from fruits and vegetables to cheese and poultry - tastes better than ours. By emphasizing better food, they are able to be satisfied with less.

Overall, Americans are eating more low-quality foods and getting less satisfaction from them. The French do it better.

Indeed, the French do do it better where food is concerned. Americans are catching up in the culinary department, at least on the coasts. Unfortunately, until we can convince most people that eating moderate quantities of high quality food is preferable to bellying up to the crap-filled buffet, we’ll be fighting a losing battle against obesity.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be following the French diet at home. It’s never been easier to do so.

One of the things I’m hoping to do in the next several days is review, one by one, the many books that have come out in the past few years touting one version or another of the so-called French diet. All of these, of course, are some play on the French Paradox, the well-known phenomena by which the French eat a diet high in saturated fats yet, in general, remain thin and healthy.

Right now one of the most popular books going is French Women Don’t Get Fat, a book written by Mireille Guiliano, the C.E.O. of the French champagne maker Veuve Cliquot. (Tomorrow’s New York Times will have a long reiview of this very work.)

Of course, Guiliano’s book is only the latest, and best promoted, in a long string of French Paradox diet books, all offering one the hope that weight can be melted off on a diet of croissants and red wine. The reality, of course is different, and portion control and much walking figure heavily into the equation.

In any event, I’ll be going through these books in the next few days, trying to sort out the strong from the weak, the silly from the useful.