Weight loss news

“French Women Don’t Get Fat!”

I was on a TV show the other day, debating whether or not there really is an obesity epidemic. It’s rapidly getting like sparring with that bunch of conspiracy theorists who claim that Apollo 11 never really landed on the Moon, and it was all a giant hoax played out by NASA to gain Cold War prestige.
There are a few so-called eminent scientists and doctors who reckon obesity is an extremist and alarming hype, actively encouraged by the diet and drugs industry and doctors in their pay, who will happily profit from a scare.
They’re right to be sceptical, of course. There have been many eras in history when fat has been both desirable and celebrated, and the global population has not suffered any ill effects.
But surely what is happening nowadays is entirely different?
I was still pondering this as I received a ton of letters following the TV programme. One very kind lady sent me a well-thumbed book, on which she’d attached a stick-it note.
“Read this, Anne, and you’ll see that there’s no excuse for being fat. All it needs is a different attitude.”
The book was the famous, and now in-famous “French Women Don’t Get Fat!” – the best-seller which claimed to explain that "French paradox" – that beautiful, chic French women eat massive three course meals every day and yet stay slim and gorgeous. It supposedly teaches you the “life of indulgence without bulge, satisfying yen without yo-yo on three meals a day.” Yes, it’s witty and oftentimes wise – but it’s title is hopelessly out of date!
Because French women are getting fat, I have learned. And yes, I was shocked, too!
As if it wasn’t enough of a jolt to find that 20 million Japanese are obese, and that 67 per cent of women in New Delhi are queuing up for obesity surgery (in a country where the poor are still dying from starvation), now official statistics state that 11.3 per cent of the French are obese with nearly another 40 per cent overweight.
Okay, that’s puny compared to the obesity stats from the USA, or even the UK. But the French! Merde alors!
I used to love popping over to France, in the days of ferry away-days, to pep up my lamentable sixth-form French, enjoy a pavement bistro cup of café, buy some delicious baguettes and always potter through the markets buying everything from fresh courgettes and choux-fleurs to local cheeses!
That’s what the French were well known for, wasn’t it? Market freshness and old-fashioned cooking with flair.
Things are changing, however. Now they have British and American style supermarkets, convenience foods and they’re using microwaves (sacre-bleu!) in schools, offices and homes. Their own government reckons that the average French mealtime, which used to average one hour and twenty minutes, now takes just 38 minutes. McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken are planning to open dozens of new stores throughout France this year. Weight Watchers, which only came to France in 1992, now sells 3,000 tons of frozen food every year to would-be French slimmers.
It’s a bit of a blow to the nature/nurture theorists, too. Apparently many scientists reckoned French people didn’t get fat because they had no fat gene. In a country which has always been abundant, perhaps French homo sapiens never needed to develop one.
Sadly, the 21st century is disproving that idea.
Now their government is targeting “le snack” – and all advertisements for products considered unhealthy are accompanied by health warnings about the dangers of eating too much fat, salt and sugar.
And they’re using shock methods, too. One of their posters is brutally poignant. It shows a very, very obese naked woman, hunched up, almost in a foetal position, as if in misery. Over her figure reads the stark headline: “Obesity kills - Do you still find it funny?"
It makes a savage point – and one which can’t, surely, be dismissed as a scare tactic?
The French are getting used to plumpness.
Last year, the winner of their “Star Academy” equivalent was an 11stones, 5feet 1inch girl called Magalie Bonneau. She had a terrific singing voice, but was constantly referred to as the “heavyweight” of TV channel TF1.
She struggled to lose weight, and eventually lost 29 pounds under the pressure of her new-found fame, but she was keen to point out that “French audiences are getting used to seeing plump girls!”
Good on her – but is this a surprising sign of the times, or a dire forecast of the shape of things to come?
Every time I campaign on the issue, I worry about the mixed message.
On the one hand, in our crazy Western culture, we have children, particularly adolescent girls, saving up their pocket money so they can try and buy slimming pills from Boots, on the way home from school. I know it, because I’ve met them and asked them why.
Why oh why do slim, young girls want to get skinny – at the risk of their health and future? Why are they so obsessed?
Because they want to look like magazine models – and they already look in the mirror and see themselves fat when they’re not.
On the other hand, we see a growing number of kids (and adults) whose lives are made a misery because they are overweight, and thus suffer the slings and arrows of a culture that worships food yet punishes fat.
I interviewed one obesity specialist in Australia who says we should never have allowed food to become an industry – it should never have been commercialised nor branded. The food, and now the diet industry has dictated our lifestyles through their greedy advertising.
But you cannot turn the clock back, can you?
In the 17th century, Rubens used to paint the most flamboyant, corpulent women and those rolls of fat and exaggerated thighs and buttocks were seen as desirable.
But that was surely because they were a sign of affluence and luxury, borne by women who spent all day bathing in asses milk and tittering court gossip behind fans. Nowadays we surely all want a more meaningful life. Surely a denial of that harsh truth is dangerous.

Advertise with us | Privacy | Terms & Copyright Website maintained by USP Networks