The Slimming Pool Weight Loss Blog: Hey, I was Eating That!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
French Diet Books Scarce
I'm reading "The French Fallacy" by Dr. Will Clower, about the so called "French paradox" or why the French can eat rich sauces, lots of cheese and wine but stay thin and healthy. Frankly, I have no evidence but my guess is they just don't sit and eat whole bags of Doritos or Hershey's Kisses, but rather they simply enjoy good food.
My nephew lives in Paris so now I have an eye on the street, so I asked him, "Is it true? Do you see many really obese people in Paris?" and he said, "You see chubby people once in awhile, but usually if someone is really big they're an American." He went on to say he's eating tons of awesome food, and, um, he's lost weight. He's also training for a marathon so that's got to count for something but, seriously, he was very active before.
I did a little informal test by visiting Amazon's French website to see if I could find how many diet or weight loss books they list. The first problem is, I don't speak French, so I wasn't sure what words to use. I tried the following (roughly translated using Google's translation service)
La réduction de l'alimentation (reducing diet)
Perte de poids (weight loss)
régime (diet)
alimentation (diet)
faire un régime (diet)
I doubt that's how they'd actually say it, but it's a start. Here's my informal survey of diet books in the US and diet books in France:
United States Diet Books at Amazon.com: query weight loss (no quotes), 18,258 results
French Amazon: query perte de poids (weight loss, no quotes), 40 results
I found the same, or similar results no matter what I tried, so basically if you want to write a diet book, write it in English and sell it in the U.S.
Don't Try This Diet Unless
You are willing to stop the junk food now. You'll only gain weight if you suddenly add more calories by switching from low fat milk to full fat milk, while you continue eating salty chips in front of the TV. If you really want to try living the French lifestyle, visit Paris for a month, and see what happens. Chances are, you'll lose weight.
Have you been to France, and have you noticed this or is it all a bunch of cheesy hype?
