Debunking the French weight myth

I’ve had this question many times: “If wheat is a major cause for obesity, why are the enthusiastic wheat-eating French so slender?” It prompts oft-repeated claims like “French women don’t get fat.” Well, they’re not. I’m in Paris, spending a lot of time at the Rolland Garros tennis facilities with tens of thousands of French people at the event, as well as restaurants, subways, groceries, and streets. Overweight and obesity are everywhere. While the tennis event is international, I hear most of them speaking French and I engage with many of them, also clearly French (as I struggle with my haltingly piecemeal French). They are not as severely overweight as people in North America and not as overweight as those in some other European countries, but there is a clear and widespread weight problem here. Sit for just one minute, and you will witness a dozen or more people just in that time walk by who have a weight problem. French authorities predict that, at the current rate of rise, the French will equal the U.S. in obesity rates by the year 2020, in just 5 years. I’m not the first to make this observation; here is a New York Times article from 2010, for instance, citing some of the numbers: 40% of the French are overweight, 11.3% are obese, and the numbers are on the rise. French doctors have repeated expressed alarm at the growing weight trends. I can conceive of a number of reasons why the French have a bit less of a probl...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle France gluten grains obesity overweight Source Type: blogs