Why does there seem to be little, if any, obesity among the people of France?

Question

Why does there seem to be little, if any, obesity among the people of France?

Answer 1

Approx  12% of the population of France is obese and the numbers are growing!

Answer 2

Because they are less sedentary than most Americans, fast food comes in smaller portions and a variety of other reasons.  I don't think it's genetic though.  Give a Frenchman a Big Mac and an easy chair and he'll balloon like anyone else.

Answer 3

well if you eat a diverse and vegetable (not vegetarian) based diet and have a drink or two it actually helps you burn off calories instead of accumulating them.

Answer 4

They eat a lot of bad food too, but they eat on a much larger period of time than most of us! Normally in America we must have eaten our dishes in under an hour, over there they spread they eating times on about 4 to 5 hours time (super), so their system has much more time to digest its food intakes properly, and they spend much more energy eating than us....

Answer 5

No McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's or KFC or other fast food joints every other corner for one thing.

Answer 6

It's called eating in moderation, a concept we seemed to have forgotten in this country.

Answer 7

Qchan has it right, I think.  I was just in Warsaw, Poland and did 4 small sample counts of 100 people walking by in various neighborhoods.  Counting "plump" people as half a point, I counted 1 obese and 2 plumps for a count of 2%!  Ourstanding result, no?   Then I tried 3 more surveys and got 8% 6% and 6%.   I found many people WALKING everywhere, even the elderly parents we were visiting.  

One problem with USA is ZONING.  People actually forbid little stores and businesses in their "residential zones"  and thus have to DRIVE for every little thing.

Europe (and Mexico where we live) has many little stores the same size as the surrounding houses so they are not ugly, car-surrounded seven-elevens etc.  And, you can walk there easily to shop.

Answer 8

Could be down to the wine-drinking.

Answer 9

They don't eat junk food.

Answer 10

They don't eat French Fries or French Toast.

Answer 11

Having actually been to France, it was sort of a great mystery to me, too: after all, the portions are huge and the food is rich. But as I travelled around, I noticed that a great many people walked or rode their bikes, which is something that not a lot of Americans do (we drive everywhere). That, and the food that the French are eating, while rich, is also varied; that is, they don't eat the same thing every day. There's also the composition of the food itself: a lot of the food is made of natural ingredients, and not processed, like a lot of American food. Also worthy of note is the fact that the French drink wine; a glass of wine a day is a practice said to be very healthy.

These, of course, were observations just based on a couple weeks spent in the country itself. There are obese people in France, they're just not as visible, it seems, as Americans. And I have no doubt that a lot of their food is on its way to becoming more processed. So who knows? Maybe in the future we'll see more obese French.

Answer 12

They eat sensibly.