FEATURE: Even French women (and men and children) get fat

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jul 1, 2005, 6:12 GMT

Paris - It is no doubt charming to believe that, as Mireille Guiliano's recent international best-seller claims, "French Women Don't Get Fat", but the reality is quite different.

A study published earlier this month by the state-run National Health Insurance Office or CNAM, revealed that 10.5 per cent of all French women are obese, nearly double the percentage in 1980.

And the study found that, despite Madame Guiliano, more French women between the ages of 15 and 45 are obese.

In her book, Guiliano claims that French women remain slim because they eat small portions, use only fresh ingredients and religiously avoid processed foods.

In addition, they are never too busy to go shopping several times a week or too poor to buy farm-fresh produce at pen-air street markets.

She admitted that there were many overweight French women, but added: "All of my friends are like me."

Nutrition expert Brigitte Cabrol would not dispute that claim. "The upper classes have retained a culture of gastronomy," she said. But she added: "This is now lost to most other French women."

As in other Western countries where women have joined the labour force in large numbers, French women now have little time for shopping or planning menus, Cabrol said. So they increasingly resort to processed foods and other short-cuts to feed themselves and their families.

As a result, Cabrol said, "They have forgotten how to eat well. And they pass this ignorance onto their children."

The consequence of the lost art of French eating is an alarming increase in obesity - and not only among women, of course.

A government study published last year showed that 11.3 per cent of the French population over the age of 15 was obese in 2003, up from 8.2 per cent in 1997. And the percentage of those overweight and obese climbed to 41.7 per cent.

"At this rate," concluded a government research agency ,"the situation in France will be like that in the United States," where two in three people are now either overweight or obese.

Most alarming for the French is that the percentage of overweight French children has doubled in the past 10 years, and now stands at 18 per cent.

The French government has launched a number of initiatives to reverse the troubling trend.

Parliamentarian Jean-Marie Le Guen, the author of the book "Obesity - The New French Illness", has sponsored several bills intended to regulate what children eat and how much they exercise.

He was one of the sponsors of a new law that will ban the presence of vending machines in public schools and universities when schools reopen in the autumn.

The bill, which he proposed to the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, would establish a government agency, the High Commission on Fighting Obesity, to ensure that pupils exercise at least 30 minutes a day at school.

Last December, 10 cities representing 450,000 students adopted a programme to re-educate their pupils about the lost French art of eating well.

The programme, entitled "Together Let's Prevent Childhood Obesity" or EPODE, is based on a pioneer initiative started in 1992 in the northern towns of Fleurbaix and Levantie, where childhood obesity remained stable in the past decade, while the national rate doubled.

Beginning at the age of three, students are instructed by their teachers and a nutritionist about the science of food and cooking, and are encouraged to eat balanced meals.

The success in the newly established programmes has been immediate.

"In less than a year, there has been a change I never believed possible," said Marie-Cecile Duchesne, town councillor of Vitre, one of the 10 EPODE cities. "Parents are telling us that they now pay much more attention to vegetables. The campaign has produced a real awareness."

A teacher at one of Vitre's primary schools, Jacqueline Bardoux, said that the children were instrumental in this change.

"At home, they get after their parents to be sure that their meals are healthy," she said.