Secrets of slim French revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3173997.stm
SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG MARVELLED AT FRANCE'S LOW LEVELS OF OBESITY - THE FRENCH EAT MORE FAT BUT LESS CALORIES
After all the French consume much more fat than Americans, downing mountains of cheese, croissants and pastries. However, just 7 % of French adults are obese - three times lower than in the United States.
Now, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic believe they have cracked the riddle. The answer, they say, is simply smaller portions. While the French eat more fat, they consume fewer calories than their American counterparts.
BIG DIFFERENCES
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and CNRS in Paris compared the size of restaurant meals and even portions in cookbooks in France and the United States. They weighed portions served up at 11 comparable outlets in Paris and Philadelphia. These included fast food outlets, pizzerias and ice cream parlours. They found that Americans received substantially more on their plate. While the average Parisian portion weighed 277 grams, the Philadelphia equivalent came in at 346 grams - 25 % more. The difference was even more stark when the researchers compared a number of well-known international chains with restaurants in Paris and Philadelphia. They found that meals in the US were consistently much larger. In Chinese restaurants, Americans were given up to 72 % more than they would have been given if they ordered the same thing in France. The researchers also compared bars of chocolate, cans of soft drink and hot dogs on either side of the Atlantic. Again, American portions were considerably larger. A bar of chocolate in Philadelphia was 41 % bigger than the same product in Paris. A soft drink was 50 % bigger and a hot dog was 63 % larger. Even yoghurts were bigger. The American yoghurt was 82 % bigger than its Paris equivalent.
"While the French eat more fat than Americans, they probably eat slightly fewer calories, which when compounded over the years can amount to substantial differences in weight", said Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He said smaller portions could help to tackle the rise in obesity in the US. "Many studies have shown that if food is moderately palatable, people tend to consumer what is put in front of them and generally consume more when offered more food", he said.
"Much discussion about the 'obesity epidemic' in the US has focused on personal willpower, but our study shows that the environment also plays an important role and that people may be satisfied even if served less than they would normally eat."
The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.
An estimated 1.7 billion people around the world are obese. This means they are also at increased risk of a range of serious disease, from diabetes to heart disease.

This is where the trick is.

Fats give us more than twice the energy carbohydrates do. To be exact the ratio is 9:4. So, to a simple minded person, fats are fattening and carbohydrates are not.

In reality, the opposite is true. The satisfaction feeling we get from eating fat compared to the satisfaction feeling we get from eating carbohydrate exceeds the 9:4 ratio.

So, on the long term, eating fat rich food makes you eat less in both meal sizes and total calories.

sam

Yes, that’s the right explication. One need just two weeks of testing such a diet, to see it this way too. I am a long-date carbohydrates-lover, that after 33 years as sugar-addicted plus 3 as diabetes-patient (type 1) that still was eating a lot of CH (~350 g / day, thanks to insulin analog of Lilly, Humalog, that is acting incredibly fast, so allowing an unprecedented control and freedom for the diabetics) changed it for a ketogenic diet just because the triglycerides level and the “bad cholesterol” was high. The blood sugar, was in spite of these excesses, still ok. In just one month on a diet, that inevitably without a medical advice and supervision was still hesitant and hugely hypercaloric (from fat) and still containing about 100 g CH / day, my triglycerides levels did fall from 2.9 to 1.29. Now, I am tuning the diet with more monounsaturated and practically no saturated fatty acids, hoping to fix the hard job too: to lower the LDL cholesterol. The success of this approach, I accept, is in no way guaranteed, considering the reticent character of LDL (in contrast with the so easily-to-manipulate trigycerides), but it is worth of trying before Lipitor . . . . isn’t?
In any case, the road back to a high-sugar diet, it is, clearly, to avoid.

And by the way, from a diabetic point of view, the poisonous atmosphere created by the eco-fanatics, naturism-fans and other bizarre species of leftist extraction around the subject of artificial sweeteners, plays into the hands of advocates of high-CH diets. And are doing a lot of harm to diabetics or other persons that for one reason or another are tempted to try a life without sugar. Scaremongering is immoral.

An aspect of French eating that the article missed is that they eat their meals, and that's about it. You don't pig out at the mall, the corner store, the train station, the magazine stand, and everywhere you go in between. In North America, snacks are sold everywhere and people take the bait.