Ma Vie in France

If you were intrigued by this title and are looking for the answer to this question, I'm sorry to disappoint. There is no magical French anti-fat gene. The French do, in fact, "get fat".  I chose this title because it's a common stereotype we hear of the French, things like "they eat all that cheese and fatty food, and yet have lower levels of cardiovascular disease". People tend to attribute this to drinking wine, or the Mediterranean diet based on olive oil.   Let's look at the facts. An OECD study published in 2014 showed that France has a rising rate of obesity, whereas countries like the US have levelled off. [1]   But other statistics show clearly that the US is still far ahead of France in terms of the obesity rate. Depending on your source, the US has approximately twice the percentage of obese adults as in France (anywhere from 24-26 % for the US, and 12-18% for France) [2] . So yes, the French do get fat, but seemingly not as fat as Ameri...

No blog on France is complete without at least one post about food, and I'm surprised it's taken me so long to write one! But as I started to think about all of the different things there are to say about food in France (and there are many) I realized that it's just as important to discuss how people talk about food as it is to describe the food itself. So how do French people talk about food? Below I'll give a examples of language relating to food that I think are important to help understand the French mentality and experience of eating. Food is an experience: je prends mon déjeuner For starters, in France food isn't just something you consume, it's an experience. There is a certain time, place, and way that you eat. The language reflects this, as it's seen more appropriate and polite sounding in French to say 'I take my lunch' (Je prends mon déjeuner) rather than 'I eat my lunch', sounding a little more vulgar or just rep...