Bread & The Gentle Art of Attempting to Live Forever...

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Is crusty bread the source of the so-called “French paradox “? In the course of researching my new diet book (well, I’m at least as qualified as half of the charlatans and snake-oil salesmen the shamelessly peddle their three-hundred-odd page doorstops to a gullible and (frequently) hungry public in that I’ve been eating food myself for over 38 years and I’ve got LOADS of letters after my name, some of them actually referring to real qualifications), I came across the fascinating snippet of information that bread crust contains high levels of the same polyphenols that have been seen to reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

Originally the book was to have been called “Lose Weight the Jon Doust Way – Eat Less and Exercise More!” but, unfortunately the swine at Good Housekeeping have pipped me to the post on that one by publishing a very similar regime in a recent-ish copy of that otherwise fine periodical. God rot their socks.

So I’ve had to change direction a bit and the current working title for the tome is “Live Forever or Die in the Attempt – Strategies for Making Your Kids Hate You by Living to 100 and Frittering Their Inheritance Away.”

Rather unfortunately (from my point of view, at least), I’ve had to dump a fair amount of the original copy as it was no longer that relevant, though the recipes, which were mostly just copied from elderly copies of the “Vegetarian” magazine that I found in a box during a recent clear out, have stayed in. (Do vegetarians live longer? My friend Neil – who claims to be a doctor, though seems incapable of grasping the principles behind simple things like contraception – reckons that they do not, though, as usual, he was unable to produce any evidence to support this assertion.) Now I need to find some fairly convincing sounding pseudo science to bulk out the manuscript. Hence my interest in any supposed benefits from eating, well, pretty much anything really.

Having established that the Italians, Spanish and Greeks (though, oddly perhaps, not the Portuguese) shuffle off this mortal coil about a year or two later on average than the Brits, Germans and Americans much has been made of the idea that somehow the diet of these nations (fruit, olives, fish, etc) has a bearing on this.

[Interestingly, Canadians live an incredibly long time – averaging 80.1 years versus the US at 77.7, UK at 78.4 and France at 79.6. I can only assume that this is either a side effect of the cold slowing down aging, or, and this is not my idea but that of another friend, John, who hales from those parts, that the average Canadian is so dull that pronouncement of death can be delayed due to the medicos being unable to tell with any great certainty that flame of life has actually been extinguished.]

Then, up pop the French with their diet of coffee like creosote, unpasteurised cheese and fags, and a life expectancy irritatingly in line with the rest of Southern Europe. “Must be the wine” sez one and all. Now, I’m not so sure. And this will be the central tenet of my magnum opus – I think it is the disproportionate quantity of crust that the French eat with their bread that is, in fact, the source of their longevity. However, I rather suspect that I may be expected to present some actual scrutiny of this hypothesis to any prospective editor, hence my questions as follows: –

Is French bread any more or less crusty than that consumed in the nations of Italy, Spain and Greece? Have the Portuguese a taste for sliced white? Do the Canadians enjoy a thicker crust than their neighbours to the South? Are there REALLY people who cannot tell the difference between Stork and butter? There MUST be someone out there who knows the facts about essential nutritional questions such as these!

[Mochas]

[quote]Is crusty bread the source of the so-called “French paradox “? In the course of researching my new diet book (well, I’m at least as qualified as half of the charlatans and snake-oil salesmen the shame...[/quote]

< Then, up pop the French with their diet of coffee like creosote, unpasteurised cheese and fags, and a life expectancy irritatingly in line with the rest of Southern Europe. “Must be the wine” sez one and all. >

I think you've hit the nail on the head and missed the point at the same time. It's perfectly obvious to me that the French train their bodies from an early age to tolerate and indeed thrive on things that namby pamby nutritionists elsewhere are trying to persuade us are harmful.

Now that the politically correct EEC and national bureaucracies are insisting that cheese is pasteurised, less wine is drunk and smoking is outlawed just watch French life expectancy plummet.

I expect it's only a matter of time before they ban the baguette as well...

[Teamedup]

The thing is that they start so young with the quignon, is it a life time thing this partaking of the crust thing?

I like a bit of crust from time to time and rather oddly love crusty rather than soft bread to dunk into my potage. As I suppose I prefer crunchy rather than soft biscuits to dunk in my coffee.

I do not like a baguette sandwich though, I feel worn out by the time I get to the end of it aching jaw and gums. And the best of our village bakers not only has a crusty outside but the mie is chewy too these days. I'll just have to take my chances eating softer bread I think

 

 

[Pixietoadstool]

Jon,

I have also wondered if the inordinate amount of fresh bread eaten by the French was not only the reason for their longevity but up until recently the reason for their relatively svelte-like physiques.  Whenever I go to France I eat exactly what I want and always lose weight.  I do eat a lot more bread when I am there and I particularly appreciate a baguette - the crustier the better!  So have you investigated polyphenols and their involvement in weight regulation and longevity?  I will do a bit of a search on the internet and get back.

Another interesting thing would be to compare mortalities for the regions of France - say comparing Calvados with somewhere like Luberon - the Luberon have a more Meditteranean diet with wine whereas Calvados is famed for the unpasteurised cheeses, cream, cider and Calvados.  I have heard that there is a higher mortality rate from cancer in the North - some put this down to the carcinogenic effects of Calvados.  It could also be the granite in Manche and much of Northern Brittany.

When I have been to Greece, Spain and Italy I have usually been given crusty bread to eat  (never been to Portugal).

As with any of these epidemiological studies the reason is probably multifactorial but crusty bread is food for thought

Valerie

Edit:  In the news last week it was reported that coffee consumption is linked to a lower risk of diabetes.  After a bit of research it turns out that polyphenols are brilliant nutrients found in loads of good things and that they can help weight loss, prevent cancer and have cardiovasculoar benefits too:

"‘Polyphenols’ are naturally occurring compounds found in fruit, vegetables, tea, coffee, fruit juices, and red wine. Cocoa or chocolate are among the richest sources of polyphenols, including a variety called flavanols and one type in particular known as “proanthocyanidins”."

 

[Lizzie15]

Valerie- how do you do this??? Must be a book in this as well- "Whenever I go to France I eat exactly what I want and always lose weight. "   

  Sadly,this isn't the case for me-nor for many others I suspect

 

 

 

[Davies]

I think you've hit the nail on the head and missed the point at the same time. It's perfectly obvious to me that the French train their bodies from an early age to tolerate and indeed thrive on things that namby pamby nutritionists elsewhere are trying to persuade us are harmful.

  I think you too have a good point, that maybe a limited exposure is more beneficial than no exposure in some cases. While there's no doubt that overexposure to the sun causes skin cancer, there's now a school of thought in Australia that says that if you completely avoid any exposure to the sun, you can make yourself more prone to skin cancer  that you would by having a reasonable and minimal exposure. Now I'm not suggesting that everyone should try a few fags but I think that if you try and avoid everything, then maybe you don't build up any resistance.

Another Dave

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote]Jon, I have also wondered if the inordinate amount of fresh bread eaten by the French was not only the reason for their longevity but up until recently the reason for their relatively svelte-like phy...[/quote]

Valerie - Although I started this post in jest, I confess that I am becoming a little bit interested in these polyphenol chaps (my background is in chemistry witha hefty chunk of biochemistry thrown in) and it would seem that what I was all too ready to take the pee-pee out of is, in fact, a serious line of research for people who held on to their white coats and chose the purity of scientific endevour rather than the lure of filthy lucre like wot I did.

If their benefit is proven, and since France is LOADED with things full of them, I intend to shamelessly leap onto the bandwagon (preferably before it gains too much speed) and rebrand our gites as a kind of health spa where guests will exist solely on a regime of crusty bread, coated with Nutella and washed down with gallons of treacle-thick coffee (ante meridiem) or red wine (after the sun has passed the zenith).

The link to weight loss does seem a little tenuous from what I've read so far, but no more daft than many....

[Eskenazi]

French people are thin because they smoke. Smoking is also the reason why most French women have that raddled, pasty type of skin. Smoking kills you slowly. Period.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote]French people are thin because they smoke. Smoking is also the reason why most French women have that raddled, pasty type of skin. Smoking kills you slowly. Period.[/quote]

"Most" French women?

[Teamedup]

Most french women I know smoke. They diet and smoke and they are thinner than I.