French Women Don't Get Fat

[Teamedup]

MJW I eat them too. It is knowing where to buy and that the shop has a big turnover of their wares that is the thing. I confess a place I will buy from is just next to my dentists of all places. I was at the dentists last week and the look of disappointment on my face for all the world to see when I saw the blinds were down and a little notice saying that they were off that week.

[chicfille]

I like them too, and every time I go back to my home town I feel embarrassed when I see the excuses for cakes on display in an average UK bakery. All those rainbow coloured meringues and chemical custard tarts.... yuk. Give me (and many others it seems) a humble, flaky, with a spot of crème patissière in the middle, pain au raisin any day, with a big mug of tea of course, and I'm very happy.

Do like the French do - if you're going to treat yourself, get something decent, made with love by a real patissier. Then really enjoy it. Then you don't get fat.

Unless you do it more than five times a day.

[Teamedup]

Now I would rather have an english custard tart with some nutmeg on than a flan anyday. Flans are made of diluted yellow caochouc aren't they. Where I am from in the UK there are bakers I would never go to, and others that are very good. I am a very selective consumer anywhere.

[chicfille]

I'm all for proper home made custard tarts (nutmeg and all), in fact I love them! Just not the ones I see in certain shop windows. French flans are indeed rubbery and horrible, my kids hate them and so do I. When I first tried one I had to go home and make one myself with a recipe from my French cookery book, once just to make sure they were supposed to be like that, and unfortunately they are. 

I too am a very selective consumer and am disappointed to see as much tat in French food shops as in English ones, especially the supermarkets, but I do like a good local bakery which are all too rare in the UK.

[SaligoBay]

Me too! 

Maybe I was lucky, but I used to live near a baker in the UK that did, now what did they call them, something unromantic like "custard slices".   Like the French millefeuilles, with creme patisserie in the middle, but I've never tasted anything like them in France, they were just heavenly.   I find it all too sickly sweet in France, I'm afraid.

The pains au chocolats and pains aux raisins are fine, but even then it depends on the boulangerie.   Our village ones are NOT the kind of thing you write home about!

 

 

[Mpprh]

MJW I eat them too. It is knowing where to buy and that the shop has a big turnover of their wares that is the thing. I confess a place I will buy from is just next to my dentists of all places.

Hmmm

symbiosis ?

Peter

[Mpprh]

"French Women Don't Get Fat"

If my mother in law got out more, you would all know this is a myth

Peter

[letrangere]

"Like the French millefeuilles, with creme patisserie in the middle, but I've never tasted anything like them in France, they were just heavenly.   I find it all too sickly sweet in France, I'm afraid."

You've jogged something in my memory, SB, I can clearly see this lovely West London patisserie of my childhood that made wonderful millefeuilles, the likes of which I've never eaten since even in France. 

M

 

[letrangere]

If I knew how to do links (I know, I know I've got to learn but figuring out how to operate the DVD machine must take priority), I'd be able to put one in right here so that you could all just click on it and go immediately to an article written by "An Assistant on the New Yorker", whatever that is, disagreeing with the author's statement.  (This book is currently #3 on New York Times bestsellers' list apparently.)  Instead, make your way to www.msn.com and in the large square box on the home page, one of today's features (use the left/right arrows to move between the stories) discusses the book further.  Mainly looking at it from an American perspective, it still makes very engaging reading.  M

[Plato comes homePlato]

We were talking about the matter of French women (men seem to be just fine it seems) being overweight. I raised any number of points but the shaved chocolate I didn't mention took people's wayward minds. I have to admit that the odd fly stuck in the gateau or pizza leaves the proprietors unaffected,nevertheless both in quantum and quality this is vastly below our own diets in rotundity causing chemicals and fatty muck. Even on that point the use of olive oil in France is significantly imporatnt in diet. There are vast numbers of overweight French women but I raised a significant issue, the absence of a reply to it causing me to wonder if respondents have been in France with their eyes open (heheheh) because the streets of French Villages are deserted most of the day. You would have little idea as to the nature of inhabitants unless you move amongst then elsewhere.

Someone commented on the excellence of Lebanese providors...come on!!...the sausagy greasy trash shaven with a filthy unwashed tool and served as "lebo food" bears no resemblance to "lebanese food". Swamped with homus or chilli it is evil, evil stuff and makes mackers the sancho pancha of Paris and Toulouse....I reject out of considerable experience that this is quality food...it is as rubbishy in gastronomy as the French version of Chinese food and is at the low end of edible nutrition and even lower in the cleanliness scale as are the nose picking brow wiping chest scratching street vendors who then handle your shishko...or whatever. Mabe if you like to burp and regurgitate this vile stuff for recycling the foul taste you might have a point....

I suppose like good music, if you have never eaten good food or heard good music you'd think today's applling efforts were /are delightful. Sadly Lebanese food, inclusive of 'real lamb"  available in the 70's and 80's has been usurped by fast-food greasy mucky consolidated fat laden garbage called 'meat".  

So are we any closer to solving the riddle of the unfat French women?? The answers are in my previous work but I am sure that there are more possibilities involved than shaven choclate and mille-feuilles.

Cheers

[SaligoBay]

I think chicfille had it right, Plato, the skinny ones just don't eat.   There's also a whole industry fattening itself up very nicely on slimming products and low-fat versions of everything.

I don't think there's any great mystery involved.  That Marianne that does Nouvelle Star is no lightweight, nor is the one who does the Weakest Link, nor is Muriel Robin, and they're not the only ones.   The problem of obesity in France (especially amongst the young) appears regularly in magazines and papers. 

[letrangere]

the sausagy greasy trash shaven with a filthy unwashed tool and served as "lebo food" bears no resemblance to "lebanese food". Swamped with homus or chilli it is evil, evil stuff and makes mackers the sancho pancha of Paris and Toulouse....I reject out of considerable experience that this is quality food

You're presumably referring to shawarma?  This is street food in Lebanon, it's the equivalent of a sandwich, and it's not something you'd eat in a restaurant.  Crikey, don't write off Lebanese cuisine on the basis of this!  There's an awful lot more to it.  Can't understand why it would be served with chilli either for I've never come across anything remotely spicey in any Lebanese cooking and I currently eat it several times a week. 

I think you need to try a decent restaurant.  If you're in Paris, I give you some addresses.  Haven't a clue about Toulouse though.

M 

[SaligoBay]

Nobody's mentioned French MEN yet.  

[GRT17]

Re. French MEN,

they don't get FAT they just have "Abdos Kro'" one friend of ours who has a fine set told me that women like to see men with a beer belly! He say it reassures the wives !!!!!!!!

i.e. that they provide good meals!

 

LOL

Gill

[letrangere]

He say it reassures the wives !!!!!!!!

Come on, Gill, don't be coy!  Reassures them of what exactly?  M

[chicfille]

Re men, my MIL recently told FIL that he was getting fat, which I found pretty funny as he's the trimmest, fittest 55 yr old I've ever known. Poor bloke, she gave him some real grief, though he was entirely unbothered. They are very judgmental about excess weight.

That said, given the amount of cheese, charcuterie and meat fried in butter that is put on the table the whole family should be enormous. As I said, it's all in the quantity. And the fact that they don't snack at all, ever. Not as much as a cup of tea when it's not mealtime.

[GRT17]

[quote]He say it reassures the wives !!!!!!!! Come on, Gill, don't be coy! Reassures them of what exactly? M[/quote]

Margaret

That's all, ..........honest! exactly as I said, if a man has a large beer gut or well rounded tummy, apparently this reassures the wife that her man is well fed!

 

I have to say that this particular friend is known to have "a glad eye"

Gill

[SaligoBay]

I asked TOH about this eating thing, because he's lucky enough to have a job and meet real people.

He says that there are vending machines at work, selling Snickers and stuff like that, but it's mostly only the foreigners who use them.   French people just don't snack.

He said too that when they've got customers in, and coffee and pastries are laid on, French people will maybe eat 2 of those miniature pains au chocolat.  MOH confesses to tucking into 6 or 7!!!!!

So I'm still with chicfille.  No mystery, they just eat less! 

 

[GRT17]

So I'm still with chicfille.  No mystery, they just eat less! 

So now we know!

Time to re-educate my eating habits

Gill

[letrangere]

he's lucky enough to have a job and meet real people.

SB, wish I worked for the same company as your OH.  Most of the people I meet in the course of my work are close relatives of the customers in the infamous bar in Star Wars 1!  M

[Josephine79]

OK folks, I'll let you in on a secret.

A lot of French people don't actually eat food. What they do consume in large quantities to prevent themselves from keeling over is rehydrated powdered gloup in a wide variety of flavours. This powdered muck is sold by pyramid sales and bears a name which phonically combines the first name of Mr Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector for schools, and the family name of an actor called Jude (don't want to get sued, here).

It is sold as an 'aid to well being" and the people who use it swear by it - although their bank managers are not so keen......

Personally I'll stick to everything in moderation (cream cakes, chocolates... anyone know where you can buy Creme Eggs here?)

Oh, and another interesting thing I was told by a Frenchwoman this week: on Sundays it is not Lent. Yes, really - even the priests are allowed to pig out on wine and cake on the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

When I was a kid and you gave something up for Lent that meant all day every day - it seems rather a cop out to have a "day off" once a week.

Hope you found this illuminating,

Jo

[Plato comes homePlato]

 

Saligo bay..you shame me that you didn't even read the first lines of both my replies..the first alluded to the singling out NOT of fat men and the second opened:

"We were talking about the matter of French women (men seem to be just fine it seems) being overweight.

please remove your shirt and with a flagillating lash walk the house flagillating yourself (no ribaldary PLEASE we are..after all British no??) and saying 'mea culpa mea culpa Plato". You will lose weight by the way...

I agree that the lebanese mafiosa has introduced lebo muck foods throughout the world. I have also experienced the 'kidnaps' where one proprietor grabs you as he or she sees you looking into an adjacent restaurant. I have experienced the loathsome Paris Street 'food' and its filthy proprietors and equipment...especially on the road to Notre Dame.This sort of greasy muck kept in ideal bacterial multiplying conditons and its sugary accoutrements fill fat cells rapidly as well as  creating vile stomach upsets. In Australia some used to serve real lamb but they went broke once this sausage monstrosity flooded the market..now there IS no choice...

A story to bore you or amuse you...During WW11 my mother's sister married a leb doctor. He became a great force within the church and was amusing but politically active in the national forces for the crusade of imaginary bible meanings which are so misinterpreted by all Christian religions(and their cult opponents)....and we drifted apart for some thirty years .They had numerous children thereafter whom I never thought of as lebs though quite arabic looking, one of whom suicided just a few years ago. This brought us together again for the funeral.  At the funeral (mass said by 14 Priests...most of us would have been lucky to get one!!) the whole leb lot turned out.The scense was amusing as scores of flash lebs mingled whilst we in our suits and sunnies looked like supervisory CIA or the blues brothers plus one at the Godfather's birthday party!! at the wake....Leb food was out in quantum,vast arrays of beguiling delicious food... home made and brilliant. Real leb stuff...I repeat not this greasy sausage muck churned out God knows where and God knows how and transported and stored in questionable circumstances later to be called yes "scwarma" and other names depending on how shaped sized and adulterated...

I have noted many workers who spend their post morning tea or lunch time burping and fxxxing and feeling so very ill after eating this ertsartz lamb slop made solid somehow and mixed with salad and placed on turkish bread. Lamb??...Could be camel horse or dog or mixtures of the lot or leftovers..who'd know but the nett effect is illness and obesity for those who still have gastronomically appreciative stomachs...I'd like to know any truly good restaurants but any restaurant selling this sausage concoction is NOT a good restaurant. and if you think the street sellers are good...sorry I would feel eternally suspect...

Fortunately my French girlfriend has an intrinsic sense of good food and her doubt about such 'pique' foods as are all french (women) I have met who are slim...or just plain average and very sexy...probably means only her genetics will fatten her. As I said most french are not even visible on the streets most means virtually all!! ....so statistical conclusions and misdirections  are even MORE faulty than usual (Grammar specialists: the double neg with "misdirections" and "faulty" is not a true posetivising..ok!!)

Ciao and bientot

[Plato comes homePlato]

I think my views on ersatz leb food by lebs or anyone else are unmistakeable. In reply to the powdered gunk..never heard of it in 10 years experience with france and provence....

On the subject of sweet fattening chocolate and other stuff and drinks..you can be sure of one thing at any moment of any day, anywhere a simple and clean diet exists the capitalist lust and sniffing ratlike noses will sniff out out and snare it, flooding it with trash foods and high profit slops. MacDonalds is only one example. There is a place for reasonably priced natural fruits in cans for example (ie unsweetened) but the garbage fruit juices (almost all are 'reconstitued sludge..if you bother to read their labels and only a couple are 'pure' but now generally 'pulp removd' and so even more valueless than 'before' ), cans, cordials and so on are simply addicitive drinks designed to snare cash. The value for money is miniscule and again this stuff largely eminates from US based factories wherever placed to maximise profits by using cheap labour to do so. By the way juices without pulp are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream dumping sugars and causing headaches very commonly. This also increases addiction (coffee is similarly addictive and similarly headache causing..the next drink temporarily relieves the headache...and so on)

France remember is a country of communes..ie communistic!. Traditionally enemy of exploitive capitalism it is reacting now to invasion, over reacting in many cases. n theother hand its eating habits and siestas are still tightlyy held as tradition but pervading rubbish food is slithering in via the young who admire the USA (God only knows why!!)All needed to turn the place into another slop food paradise is enough migration. Let's try to change our habits for the better and not theirs for the worse eh!

 

Cheers