French Women Don't Get Fat? It's the Sugar!

You've heard the rumors about European women's uncanny ability to stay slim even while eating buttered croissants for breakfast (France), sausage and beer for lunch (Germany), or deep fried seafood for dinner (Spain). Perhaps you've even done research in the form of spending a week in Paris, ogling the lank beauties as they alternate bites of creamy pastries with puffs at their cigarettes. Well, I have taken the research to a new level, and have turned my own body into a test case for theories about European vs. American diets. And I have some interesting findings to report.

When I moved to Germany a couple years ago, all the American and Canadian women I knew were marveling at the fact that they were losing weight, in spite of eating habits that should have rendered the opposite results. We were indulging in beer, wienerschnitzel, bratwurst, potatoes in every incarnation, creamy dairy products with no English translations (schmand anyone?), yet we were all visibly getting thinner. I maintained my svelte European body throughout two years of living in Germany, through no design of my own.

On the flipside, when I moved back home to New York last summer with my German boyfriend, it took about a month for us both to notice we were getting soft. I ran through all the possibilities: it's true that I no longer have the bicycle, but I walk all over the city; I do yoga more often here; I never eat processed food or junk food; I'm not a dessert person; I cook healthy meals for myself with lots of organic vegetables; I hardly ever drink beer and there is not a wienerschnitzel in sight. I just didn't get it.

Then one day we were sitting at breakfast, eating a health food adaptation of cornflakes with soy milk and drinking a fizzy Vitamin C beverage. My boyfriend picked up the box of the Vitamin C drink and read the ingredients. The first one was Glucose. What is that exactly? According to Wikipedia, it is a monosaccharide, or simple sugar, also known as grape sugar or corn sugar. No wonder those C drinks were so addictive. Then we checked out our soy milk. First ingredient: Evaporated Cane Juice. The missing word here, is of course, sugar: what other kind of cane is there? The natural cornflakes... more Evaporated Cane Juice. Everything in our hippie breakfast contained sugar, disguised through misleading terminology!

Since then -- several weeks ago -- I have been consciously eliminating sugar from my diet and -- I swear -- I have already lost my American tummy. Admittedly, I am generally a skinny girl, and this is in conjunction with an otherwise healthy lifestyle. But I really believe sugar was the missing link in the American weight question.

Now I look at every item before I buy it and eliminate any with a sugar product (including glucose, fructose, sucrose, and all their friends). I have been going out to eat much less often, knowing from years of waitressing that the secret ingredient in many American restaurants is sugar. (Ever wonder why you can't get that authentic American-Chinese-Food taste when you make stir-fry at home? Try adding sugar.) On top of this, my boyfriend has noticed that certain products marketed in both Germany and the U.S. actually have more sugar in their U.S. versions. (He once bought a soda-type drink, took a couple sips, and threw it out saying, "This is disgusting! It has nowhere near this much sugar in Germany!")

In other words, in addition to all the other more obvious problems with the American diet, the one you may have overlooked in your attempts to get healthy is that we have a massively over-sugared food culture. It's not enough to shop at the natural food store. You have to remember what country that natural food store is in, and how far gone we are in an addiction to a drug that will never be made illegal but that is obviously at odds with healthy living.

Comments

[wushu]

You're dead on! I've only been in the USA twice, NY and Detroit, but I was chocked how awfully sweet, large and just excessive everything is.
The worst effect of the sugar is the addictiveness you mention. I used to work on Ireland, living at my sister's, and she always keep KitKats at home (chocolate bars). Mmm, I'll taste one, I'm thinking. But the problem is that once the sugar rush hits you, the insulin hits back and then your blood sugar drops to a level lower than before you took that KitKat. So you need a new one. And then another one. After having eaten a dozen of those every day for a week I got tired of running to the KitKat stash and I remembered a colleague mentioning the insulin chock, so I drastically cut down on the carbs (all carbohydrates cause this, but the white sugar is the worst, the "fastest"). I stopped eating anything with white sugar. In fact I banned anything white - sugar, bread, pasta - and changed it to dark and cut down the rations. I love eating, though, and I love sports, so I still ate enough (slow, dark) carbs to give me enough strength to make the daily run and filled my belly with vegetables and fruit (I didn't change the meet or fat consumption).
I lost 5 kilos in a week! And I was glowing. I was full of energy, I was sharp, I was smart and damn, I looked

[trollslayer]

It's cool that you have made this discovery through your own experiences and consequent curiosity, however it's been long known that everything that comes in a bag, a box, a package, a carton, a can, or a restaurant, has some form of added sugar.

In addition to making you put on weight more easily--because when you eat fat combined with sugar, your food intake is more easily converted into fat cells--it's quite harmful.

Sugar raises your insulin level and then leaves you hungry an hour later after you crash. Rapid fluctuations of blood-sugar levels are unhealthy because of the stress they place on your body. Once your insulin level is raised, it inhibits the release of growth hormones, which in turn depresses the immune system.

In the last 2 decades, sugar consumption has increased in the U.S. from 26 pounds to 135 lbs. of sugar per person per year. Prior to the turn of the century (1887-1890), the average sugar intake was 5 lbs. per person per year. Cardiovascular disease and cancer was virtually unknown in the early 1900's.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

[TexasDem0]

Adelle Davis was warning us about this in the 1950's.
Did anyone pay attention?

[iyamchazz]

The real killer additive in almost everything is...
High Fructose Corn Syrup.

[carrieanna]

Agreed, I have tried to help my intake by steering away from processed food. I don't have to worry that sugar was secretly added to the veggies I bought at the farmer's market.

I've also pushed myself to stop putting sugar or honey in my hot tea.

But I will always have a weakness for cokes. I can't eat Tex-Mex without a Coca-Cola. It's impossible! But maybe I can get back to only treating myself to that once every 2 weeks or something.

[iyamchazz]

Coke Zero is your best bet.
All the taste without the sugar.

[chroma601]

I agree there is too much sweetener in the American diet, but find it worth noting that high fructose corn syrup is used most. As I understand it, the corn syrup is not read as sugar by our bodies, and we don't get a message from the brain to stop. Real cane sugar triggers a response from the body to stop. Or so I've been told. In any case, I suspect the corn syrup is far worse than sugar.