The French Paradox

Today I'd like to dive into one of the dietary clichés so often bandied about by Americans: the French Paradox. The idea that a couple glasses of wine, a nice piece of foie gras and a healthy dose of joie de vivre are all you need to live a long, healthy and happy life. For it's an idea that many Americans seem to buy into.

Certainly one can be relatively happy eating almost any type of diet. And happiness is too broad an art form to reduce to the sum of what you put on your plate each day. Rather it's the first two adjectives I'll humbly take exception with in this post. That's to say, are the French really any healthier or longer living than Americans?

To begin with the health claims of the so-called French Paradox have long been overblown if not downright false. Any supposed difference in heart disease is more than offset by the similar disease rates from which the French suffer in almost all other areas of health. Disease rates that mirror other countries that eat a similar Western diet.
Indeed, healthy adult life expectancy varies little between Western countries. A few years of generally declining health does not constitute a reasonable dietary goal in my opinion. Nor does the prospect of diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's that can seriously diminish not only the quantity but the quality of our lives. So all health claims aside, lets take a look at the other inherent claim to the French paradox, the pleasure principle. Fiction or fact?

Before we begin, let me say that the French do a lot of things right in my view. Selection and preparation of ingredients is taken seriously. The variety of fresh produce and other items is impressive and affordable. Once the meal prepared, much more time is dedicated to the ritual of dining than in the US. Meals are eaten with friends and family in a setting that befits them.

The culture of fast food, while making further inroads each year, remains far less evident in France than in America. There still exists a strong social taboo in regards to snacking between meals, whose hours you can literally set your watch by. For an American in France, these social rules can surprise by their unbending rigidity. But how does it all translate in regards to pleasure?

First, let's say that the French in general are far thinner than most Americans, a fact that's true though of almost every other nation on Earth. Thinness is of course a relative standard and the French are far from immune to obesity or excess weight. Lets just say that not all French women are skinny bitches by any means. But more importantly, those that are in my experience are almost just as paranoid about their weight as many American women.

For no sooner does one of their infamously rich entrées or desserts arrive at table than a barrage of fat-phobic dialogue fills the air. "Oh, ça fait grossir" (Oh, how fattening). Or "je vais faire exploser ma balance" (literally: I'm gonna make my scale explode). I have nothing against a woman wanting to stay thin but its this type of behavior that can put a guy positively off his appetite.

For surely there is no less pleasurable way to eat a meal than with this type of guilt or anxiety surrounding it. This type of "bad faith" as Sartre would call it has become as entrenched in the flow of many dinners I've attended as the detailed descriptions of the origin and character of the wine or cheese selected for the meal. I find it incredibly bad taste to subject your neighbor to your own dietary hang-ups at the moment of crowning pleasure of the meal.

Because if you do occasionally partake of rich cuisine you can either honor how your body will handle it or continue to play the role of the tortured gourmand. I would argue for the former. For there is a beauty in the fact that your human body has been honed through millennia of rich evolution with its environment to look upon this piece of foie gras or camembert as an excellent chance to stock away extra calories for a rainy day.

It is a luxury most people throughout human history would not have taken nearly so lightly. For in their simple wisdom lay a truer understanding of what feasting should mean. Only in a society of such decadent abundance could we so pervert our natural instincts, swapping gratitude for guilt and joy for vanity.

But a truer understanding would let you happily enjoy your dessert because you'd have ample faith in the excellence of the rest of your diet to keep you thin, healthy and happy. Gone will be the tortured choice between thin and happy, between pleasure and pride. Such a recognition represents one of the rare chances remaining for us to break free from our body-hating culture and make friends once more with the most elemental part of ourselves, the body.

And one shouldn't deny the beauty of a thin, capable body in this world for it's one of the most divine forms of our human condition, a true work of art. But if it comes at the price of anxiety and worry, we will have made an enemy of our body. And such a trade-off should never be justified. Nor should we sacrifice a thin, healthy body in the mistaken belief eating will thus be pleasure-less and dull.

This world exists for you to be free in and anyone who tells you otherwise is surely no wise man nor artist. For you can have your cake and eat it too. The art is entirely in knowing how.

So please be happy and well little cell.