Why are French women so thin & the food so good?... | "Parisian chic" | Justine Leconte

Hello everyone, Justine here. This video has no

thin

g to do with fashion, but it has to do with my culture, and it is a topic that you requested, which is why it is now also part of the French series. The title of the video is two different

thin

gs. The first part is something I hear often because I live outside of France: that French

women

are supposedly very thin. And the other half: the

food

is

good

, is what I think is the reason. The quality of the

food

is very

good

. In this video I want to give you my opinion on the whole French diet thing.

It's a quick and easy video. It is my subjective opinion on the matter, I was born and raised in France, but I also compare it with other countries in which I have studied, worked or lived. Let's say this video is something to think about. First the global diet. In France we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. It can be cooked, it can be raw, it can be juiced or smoothied, it doesn't matter. But people say 12 a day is a good number to make sure you're getting different sources of vitamins every day. We love it and eat a lot of soup, vegetable soup, preferably homemade.

Your grandmother, if you are French, she probably told you that you need to eat soup to be healthy and strong. And people who complain about being too small for something probably get the response: "Aha! You didn't eat enough soup when you were little, did you?" We often cook ourselves at home. Preparing the food is part of the process and part of the fun afterwards. In my house we didn't eat anything canned. Except corn, for some reason, because corn is hard to prepare. We didn't have a microwave because we never heated frozen ready meals or anything like that.

We prepare everything fresh every day. We shop every few days for the next few days. We do not keep a large stock. Because if you buy meat, milk or whole fresh vegetables, they won't last longer. And if people have the opportunity, they go to the market every week to buy the freshest products. We don't eat processed foods and we French people are very allergic to anything that says "genetically modified" in the ingredients. If you read that on the label: run away. We eat sweet things like desserts, like chocolate, sweets, not as much as you might think in all the pastry shops in the movies that we see around the world.

But the food we buy at the store to prepare has no added sugar. For example, if you buy bread in the United States, it contains sugar. Not in France, and that is very important because we eat bread with everything. It was about diet and general grocery shopping. Now let's talk about a very important point for us French people. It's called food education. The French are very focused on teaching children good "eating habits", as we call them, from a very young age. Such balanced meals: a little of everything. No sweets. Don't eat between meals. No carbonated drinks.

These are all things I was never allowed to have as a child. On the other hand, I was trained to eat a little bit of everything. When I was little and there was something on my plate that I didn't like, my mother always said, "Three spoonfuls to learn to like it." "Trois cuillères pour learner à aimer." And works. Now I eat and like everything, I crave fruit in winter and salad in summer. I never felt the need for a burger. I don't like the queue. I don't drink anything sweet and that's normal for me. It is said that your diet and the type of food you are fed between the ages of zero and seven will determine your tastes and eating habits later in life.

So if you do well in those early years, so to speak, it will be easy to maintain those healthy eating habits and rhythms later in life. I learned from a young age to eat four meals a day and stick to them. Breakfast, a good breakfast, without croissant. Lunch, which is the largest meal of the day in terms of calories and time. Four o'clock and dinner. I stick with that, I don't eat snacks in between. I neither need nor want, because I ate enough during these four meals. And that's even more than I need in a day.

I don't drink anything sweet while I eat, just water. It may sound a little strict if it is not the diet you are used to in your country, but if your taste is trying from the beginning and you have that rhythm, then it is very normal. For me it is normal. I don't feel like I'm restricting my diet in any way by the way I eat or drink. Eating is a lifestyle. French

women

are not on a diet. We say: "Je fais juste attention." That means, "I'm just being careful." We intuitively know what is healthy and what is not, or perhaps that is also due to our food education and taught taste, as I just mentioned.

That's why we always try to have a well-balanced mixture on our plate for each meal. In Paris there are many fewer vegetarians and vegans than in Berlin, but we vary our food much more. Plus, there are more options to choose from at the supermarket, so we don't have enough of anything. We sat down to eat and enjoyed the meals as special social moments. We have to take our time. Everything else can wait. People will work overtime at night, but will take an hour for lunch. They bother me a lot for that, because I can't eat fast and Germans eat super fast.

My friends are always almost finished eating and I am still working on identifying and enjoying the flavors and ingredients in my food. Taking time to eat is also, medically proven, much healthier, because you know when you are getting full, so you don't eat too much, you stop when you have enough and you are already happy. And two, you chew better when you eat slower, so you digest it better. So it's really, really, healthier. The way the food is presented is also important to us because we say that 50% of the enjoyment of food happens through the mouth, through the taste, 50% happens through the eyes, so the composition, the color combinations to have different colors everywhere, and not on a plate. with a single color, that is essential for us.

Eating is a very conscious process. We drink coffee, but only black. The rent is already costing you your left arm, you actually want to keep your right one to hold your coffee cup. A cappuccino or latte macchiato costs 5 euros and tastes bad, so we stick with black coffee or espresso. We drink it black, without sugar. In Berlin, however, a very large latte macchiato costs two fifty and tastes very good. For comparison. Another lifestyle question I often get is, “What about sports?” I don't think the French are very sporty, especially in Paris because people easily work ten hours a day and travel an average of another two hours, up to four hours, so there's really no time to exercise.

But if you live and work in Paris, you automatically walk miles through the metro network, run to catch the metro, go up and down stairs. There are never escalators in Paris. I don't know how people who need an escalator would survive. And you walk through the city because there are no bike lanes. Everything is too tight. There is no place for bike lanes. So even if you don't go to the gym, some people do, but even if you don't, you're still getting the recommended 30 minutes of daily exercise. And I think that's the trick. Then the question about smoking.

For example, in France there are more people smoking than in the United States. Even more so in Paris than in the rest of the country. But is that why French women are so thin? I don't believe it. I think it's because they are super active every day, they work a lot and living in Paris is very stressful. The city is so big compared to the rest of the country that the competition to get and then keep a job is so high and guess what? Stress burns calories. I know, it's not that attractive. The French Ministry of Tourism will not share this video, but in my opinion, stress is the biggest calorie burner for Parisians.

Let's move on to a happier topic, that of the daily glass of red wine. That is also a myth. I have to be careful what I say because I have not one but two uncles who are wine producers in France, but not everyone drinks wine. Some people drink and like beer better, others drink water, like me, and wine only for special occasions. White wine in summer, red wine with meat, white wine with fish, etc. But that is another lesson and I am not qualified to teach it. Wine is made from grapes. It's something healthy. It is not bad for health, I think it is medically proven, but in small quantities, in a reasonable quantity and of high quality, like everything.

France is a very healthy country if we look at the diet. The quality of the food is very high. Food education is essential and I believe food is truly a lifestyle for us. But it is not the only healthy country. In Japan, where I studied for a semester, people eat a lot of fish. They replace salt with soy sauce, which is actually healthier than salt, and are cooked with almost no fat. In Scandinavia people ride bicycles everywhere, so they put in a lot more physical effort. All the Scandinavian women I know have beautiful, toned legs. And I think it looks great.

Going on a diet is not the panacea that people sometimes expect. I think it's about developing healthy habits and maintaining them later on, and that's something the French do very well, in my opinion. The body doesn't like drama, it likes routine and regularity. Opinions? Comments? Ask? Did you like this video? Thumbs up. Thank you. You can find other episodes of the French series in the description below. Better. Day!