Maybe She Just Doesn't Care About Fresh Food

Kate Taylor goes overboard in her criticism of Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure:

The [French] national rate of obesity is rising fast. While only 6 percent of the population was obese in 1990, today the proportion is 11.3 percent. That is still well behind the same figure for the United States (22 percent) but on track to match our levels by 2020.

Hey, French obesity rates may be increasing, but she assumes the current rate of increase in France is going to hold steady, while the US rate is not going to grow. Then she states that a French government-sponsored movement

stressed that overfeeding infants was worse than underfeeding them. For older children, they advised regular mealtimes, modest portions, no seconds, and no snacks. Children's own appetites and preferences were to be ignored. This is the tradition in which Guiliano was raised, and which she proposes to those of her readers who are parents. It is another interesting paradox: The French ability to take pleasure in food, and to choose food based on taste rather than dietary dogma, begins with a child's lack of choice, and a degree of parental and state authoritarianism.

French government policies may contribute to the way the French eat; for instance, the price of baguettes is supposedly set by the government. But this criticism of hers is strange--teaching children what to eat is authoritarianism? So it's a good idea to permit children eat whatever they want?

While many people think of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia as an American problem, they are, as far as can be measured (and these statistics should always be taken with some degree of skepticism), equally prevalent in France.

So France has the same problem as the US. They've still got less overweight people.

When she met the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino for coffee in Paris, Guiliano took one bite of her croissant, declared it "disgusting," and left the rest on her plate, thereby demonstrating a lesson from her book: "Life is too short to drink bad wine and to eat bad food." Sounds nice enough, but sticking to this philosophy in all circumstances would be remarkably neurotic. What if you're hungry? The scene calls to mind a certain type of weight-obsessed woman, the kind who uses the excuse of a refined palate to mask her suspicion of food (and to justify how little she eats).

Who says you have to stick to this in all circumstances? The point is that Americans settle for less. We're more interested in food that is cheap and convenient than in the taste of the food. However, the fact of the matter is that even an inexpensive French grocery chain like ED, even the processed food is better than what's available at an American grocery chain. I suspect that Ms. Taylor simply can't tell the difference.