Originally Posted by mathmaniac

While you were an au pair in France, I was an au pair in Rome, long ago! And that describes exactly how an Italian family ate their meals. Our meals were actually pretty boring: long 1+ hour lunches of 1)cheese, a veg, and rolls and water or 2) meat, a veg, and rolls and water and 3) eggs. a veg. and rolls and water. We might have been kind of unusual that way. My friends' families (Italian friends) were very much into cooking great meals. The meat was bought that day in the little local shop in the square, so were the vegetables. The rolls were absolutely fresh. You NEVER bought more than you needed for one meal.
Just two years ago, my teenage daughter spent her junior year in France, living with a French family. She loved the food but did not gain weight. The daughter in the family actually had a job working at the local McDonald's!
I went to visit my daughter and spent two weeks in France. Weekdays, I stayed in Paris and the weekends, I visited her in Bretagne.
There is a lot of prepared food to be had on the streets of Paris but it is prepared in the small shops; the bakeries are out of this world and that bread is, I guess, prepared food, too. I think the outdoor markets still have their fans.

Originally Posted by eddiemcm

"Lower cholesterol is also linked to increase risk of stroke. People in France and Italy have cholesterol levels that would frighten most doctors, but they live longer than Americans and have less heart disease."
The controversy continues.
Average Japanese person has cholesterol 45 points lower
than average American.Their rate of cardiovascular death
is much better than USA.I believe USA is something like
number 42 among Countries of the world in life expectency.
Japan is somethink like number 5.Like I said before,the
subject of cholesterol versus longevity is confusing at best
but I'll still stick by the illustrated graphs in the Framingham and MFIT studies.
and so it goes...
Eddie