The French Paradox

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The French Paradox

A happy eater is a healthy eater

To start, I’d like to comment on a previous post: Eat whatever you want. I’m not trying to get on a milk crate and shout my diet opinions across the world, I’m just stating my opinion, which I feel is increasingly becoming a minority. If you want to eat nothing but white rice, white bread, chips, and candy all day, go for it if that makes you happy. The same goes if you want to sprinkle flax seed on your amaranth cereal floating in ice cold almond milk in the morning—this is your choice and I can’t stop you from making it. What I can do is have a commentary on the whole diet subject and throw my two cents in. If through reading these posts your decide to change your diet, that’s great! This, however, was never my goal.

The French paradox in a nutshell was an observation that while the French people as a whole ate an exorbitant amount of saturated fats (ie, butter, milk, cheese, etc) they had very low rates of cardiovascular disease compared to other nationalities. Let’s sum this up by saying that the French ate a lot of fat, drank a lot of wine, and were fit and healthy for doing so. What gives? If I started eating nothing but cheese and drank nothing but red wine all day long, I’d be in an early grave, but this isn’t all that goes into this paradox.

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Eat the rainbow. This is a term that does not endear itself to skittles, at least not in this post. This was something that I first heard about in culinary school during our nutrition classes, and it’s stuck with me ever since. When people think of vegetables, chances are they think of something green. If you look at a random plate in any home you’ll probably see a lot of green beans, peas, spinach, and broccoli. While these vegetables are all really good for you, they pretty much offer the same nutritional benefit as one another… with some variation of course. Take one of those vegetables, say, spinach and add some chopped tomatoes to it. You’re now adding vitamins and minerals that wouldn’t normally be there. Add to that a side of steamed baby carrots with cauliflower, and now we’re starting to get the picture. Without getting too nuts with this, going through the nutritional values of every vegetable under the sun, assume that a different colored vegetable is offering different nutrients from another color. If you eat the rainbow of vegetables, choose a palette of vegetable colors in any given meal, you’ll start getting a real benefit from the food you eat.

 

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This only partially explains the French paradox. What about the wine? Everyone’s probably heard that a glass of wine is very healthy for a heart… what about the whole bottle? Well, I’m sure there are some limits, but a main part of it is the antioxidant resveratrol. In large amount resveratrol has been found to lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and even imitate the benefits of a low calorie diet. While it’s nice to think that drinking a bottle of wine with dinner will help you lose weight and let you live to the ripe old age of 100, I’m not sure this explains the whole thing either.

Take a look at a French dinner plate vs. an American: A typical French dinner could consist of an appetizer, let’s say asparagus with hollandaise or a poached egg on top, or a Salad Niçoise, or a macedoine salad. They may then serve a whole Dover sole, or Grand-Mère chicken. Both would come with a healthy dose of seasonal vegetables tossed in olive oil, vinaigrette, or roasted with seasoning in the oven. Wine would flow through the whole meal and don’t forget the cheese course. An American meal might start with clams casino, buffalo wings, or crab cakes. A main course might be anything from a rack of ribs, to a grilled cheeseburger with mushrooms and onions, or fried chicken with sausage gravy and waffles. Side dishes may include mashed potatoes, French fries, grilled corn, or coleslaw.

When looking at the differences and comparing these dishes, a few huge things jump out at me. Fat is one of them. The fat from butter and the fat from fry oil are two very different beasts. While neither are great in large doses, oils used in frying are much worse for you in the long run… I won’t get into carbon chain length. All of the dishes I mentioned in an American dinner, from buffalo wings to French fries, are using some sort of long-chain saturated fat like fry oil. I can also bring up the color of said plate… brown, tan, or beige. The most color would come from the corn, but in terms of healthy vegetables, this is one of the least. So while a French dish may be laden with a rich, butter-drenched sauce, chances are it’s still healthier than American BBQ or a fish fry.

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Another reason for this is just the portion amount. American portions are fucked up, pardon my French as well as my pun. We can joke about the size of a typical fast food meal or how muffins look like beanbag chairs, but nothing is actually getting done about it. In fact, the only attempt I’ve heard of was by Mayor Bloomberg to limit the amount of soda that can be purchased in one transaction. That got shot down by soda activists. I doubt this will keep up, but if the trend continues we’ll have 36 ounce burgers selling by 2050. The French just eat less meat… a normal portion of protein is around four ounces, not twelve. So along with eating the rainbow, they eat good quality meat and fish, and just eat less of it, meaning they’re eating more vegetables that fill them up with better nutrition. I’ll also comment on truly savoring food. Instead of a massive amount of low quality food that leaves you feeling sticky and disgusting, a small amount of a very high quality food will yield a much better feeling afterwards… in my opinion.

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I could go on all day listing the differences in meal time behaviors of the French and any other nationality, but I think I got my point across. The French do it right. They savor their food, truly love fresh ingredients, the quality of food, and the quality of life it brings. They respect what sitting down to eat a meal really means, not parking themselves in front of a television or computer to eat. When it’s time for a meal, they value the time they get to spend with whoever they’re having it with, or just value the time they spend eating by themselves. Food comes first, and this is a notion I can really grab onto and run with. In my recent move, my girlfriend and I made a point of getting a really nice dining table to fit into the living room—we had previously been eating all of our meals in front of the television on a coffee table. This was mostly because of the lack of space, but it felt wrong. I agreed with my girlfriend that this just wasn’t the way we should be treating our food. I’m now the proud owner of a solid oak butcher block style dining table, and am about to buy a small outside dinette for evening meals. I can’t wait to get back to what’s important about eating a meal… food, and loved ones.

That’s really what this comes down to… love. Food is love. Food is passion and fire and life. Food is the greatest and biggest thing I, or anyone can give, and I hate to see it trivialized. I scoff at diets and fads when it comes to food because it deserves better than that. Food shouldn’t be twisted and faked, saturated or processed. Food shouldn’t be limited to anyone because they feel it leads to better lifestyles or body type. What this all boils down to is that if you eat good food, I mean really good fresh food, and truly enjoy what you’re eating and making, you’ll be happy, healthy, and live a long fulfilling life. That’s the French paradox.

- Adam from Tipped Mixology