Why French People Don't Get Fat: The REAL reasons!

And then... raclette.

"If you are what you eat, so don’t be fast, cheap, easy or fake »…

I’m french and I went in USA and the portions Of food are everything oversise when we compared with France

We are teached to drink water more than sodas. You rarely see someone with his soda cup drinking in the car or the streets. Water, water, water ;)

Here's a culture shock: I rented an airbnb in London with my family and we were shocked to see there was no dining table in a big flat (2 bedrooms and living room). I guess they eat on their knees in front of the telly. To a French person, it's just unbelievable, having no dinner table! It's almost like having no bed.........

In French we have an expression, who say: For the breakfast eat like a king, for the meal eat like prince, and for the dinner eat like a poor. So when we said"like a poor" it's for explain to don't huggely eatting🙂 In french: Pour le petit déjeuner mange comme un roi, pour le repas mange comme un prince, et pour le dinner mange comme un pauvre.

1 - We eat real food 2 - We don’t eat at any time 3 - We don’t take our cars to make only 1 mile These are the simple fact that separate France from the USA

Most of USA lives in a car. Most of europeans walk.

In France when we are with our family, sometimes lunches are 6 or 7 seven hours long you weren't totally right in the first point 😂

The walking is a huge thing! While I lived in London, I lost so much weight because I was walking 2-3 hours daily. But it isn't just the physical aspect -- I think that when you live somewhere where there's always events going on and you're always out and about, you don't think about food as much as you do when you're sitting at home.

Mdrr on dirait que les choses que l'on fait pour manger normale pour eux c'est un truc de ouf XD

she :Why French people don't get fat me : ? she :Because they know when to stop me: (mind blown)

I lost weight and ate everything when I vacationed in Paris. And learned to slow down and enjoy life. But living in the US, it's nothing but work and stress...

One of the main factor for me, being a French for the last 50 years, is that we value cooking over processed food more. As a pleasure, as a way to express and share something with others and as a basic education growing up. Let's be real, cooking is downright easy if you've learned one or two basic things early in life. Less processed foods means less salt and sugar plus additives. Which in turn makes you more likely to be a bit trimmer. Growing up, my mom taught me a few very important lessons in life. First one is so elementary that it's a wonder it's not universal. If you want to eat like your mom cooked for you, learn to do it with her. There. Autonomous. The 2 main things she then taught me at 10 was, if you're at a loss and don't know what to do, boil some water for me or cook an onion. Because there are SOOOO much things you can do from there, that you've helped tremendously. Bonus tip was buying groceries. If you have a good ingredient, you usually don't need more than 2 to make something tasty. Cooking is super easy, if you consider that it starts when you shop. As a result, I'm a pretty good cook and I'm not even the only one in my age range. I guess, as French, that we've come to realise that the way you cook is also the way you eat. So there are not many compelling reasons to be harsh on ourselves. And there are recipes where you literally don't even cook, since you're only assembling a few ingredients. Feel free to experiment, we have a saying which goes like this, "what happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen". If you fail on your first attempt, no need to advertise it on Facebook. I guess that's where we differ from Americans. Our saying is about how you cook, and the eventual fumbles you have before the food is on the table, whereas theirs is about Las Vegas. Priorities... 😁

to me one of the reasons is like you said we educate children about food very early . and not only at school ; i remember growing up hearing " you have the right to dislike it but you have the duty to try it". we start so early that even with baby food we try to have a big variety of diferent food so that growing up we beleve their taste buds will be used to more flavors (or at least i think it's why)

Most of it is accurate. However, your forgot to mention that French people use to blame fat people and practice daily body shaming. That also helps...

I think cutting out the fat and adding sugar has been the downfall of the Western diet. I use to be hungry all the time. Since I've added half an avacado/day to my diet and cut out most processed foods and I'm not constantly hungry anymore and I don't crave sweets or salty snacks I haven't lost any weight but not being a slave to those hunger pains and cravings feels like a miracle.

My favorite part of eating in France is taking plenty of time to eat. The first time I went to France taking an hour or longer to eat took a bit of getting used to. Here in the US, even at nice restaurants, if you take an hour to eat you get dirty looks and possibly a verbal reminder from your server that other people are waiting for you to leave so that they can have your table. Once I got used to the longer meals I found so many benefits to eating this way. Not only are you able to appreciate the food (rather than inhale it while you’re on the run) but you have an opportunity to visit with your companions and enjoy their company. Good food and good companions bring about a wonderful state of relaxation and well being. When my family and I return home here to the US it is always such a shock to our senses to be thrown back into the world of fast food eating on the run.

I did not even realize how school conditioned us and how our way of eating was so particular!

Je pensait que c’était normal d’avoir 1h pour manger je trouve sa même trop court et aussi l’entrée le plat principal le fromage et le dessert 😅