Mon Dieu! The French do get fat!

Well, we ARE the parents of McDonalds.....

so, I suppose all those French are being force fed those burgers?

Like a goose?

maybe they just need to learn a little moderation.

Oh! Did I just say that?

I don't think they are blaming Americans per se, just the adoption of our lifestyle. The summer I lived in France I ate wonderful food and lost about 8 lbs (I was only 129lbs to start at the time). Once, to make me "feel at home", the people I was staying with brought home big sacks of McDonald's. After weeks of real food I couldn't eat the stuff and ended up giving a lot of it to the two large family dogs.

How sad that the French would turn in their excellent cuisine for soggy hamburgers, fried chicken skin and corn syrup. The American invention and marketing of low quality, cheap, industrial food is like a plague on the world.
JUST SAY "NO" France!

hey GreenWitch, don't stomp on my buzz.

Really, I'm not "seriously" saying the French are blaming the U.S. overtly. I do though, find it humorous that in trying to figure out why they too are beginning to get hefty, they do have to look for a reason outside of themselves to figure out why.

Oh...it couldn't be that you are personally making a choice to eat fattening things....it couldn't be you are personally making a choice to sit in front of the TV and eat....That darn American influence, there's just no resisting us.

I freely admit I get a little tired of hearing how "everything" is better somewhere else....We need to do no more than open a magazine, read a newspaper, listen to the radio or TV, to hear about some incredible French, Italian, Japanese, etc. product that is just so superior. Now, when things are going off base, well, it couldn't be the responsibility of those people, it's the American lifestyle.

It always feels to me the street doesn't run both ways....when Americans are thin, stylish or sophisticated...they are acting like Europeans.
When Europeans gain some weight, it's us slob Americans influencing them.

It would just be nice to see someone from Europe mention a way in which their lifestyle was inhanced by an American product.

That's all, just a little credit for one or two minor things Americans may have stumbled upon in the last few hundred years.

The summer I lived in Vermont I ate wonderful food and didn't gain or lose a pound (I was only 110lbs to start at the time).

The first 19 years of my life I lived in NJ and ate wonderful food, and, while I went through a chubby phase at around 10 years old, left home at that same 110 pounds.

The 3 years I then lived in Florida going to college I ate wonderful food, and for a time became too thin, dropping to 100 pounds.

For the next 10 years after that, I lived in various places in the U.S. and ate wonderful food, and at the end of that time, weighed in at a whopping 115 pounds.

Unbelievably, no one country has cornered the market on wonderful food.

Well, many things WERE no doubt enhanced by American products in Europe. But I doubt the fast food products would be among them. Nobody's forcefeeding the French, nor Americans (who are still 20% more obese than the French). It's the convenience of the crappy food and the accessibility and speed that makes it so widespread. The McWesternization - the phenomenon doesn't stop at France, of course. Obesity has been spreading throughout Europe, I know we have the same phenomenon in Slovakia.
Similar with Hollywood movies- it's a force that cannot be resisted. It drowns the European made movies out of the prime showing times, into "alternative" movie theatres, etc... Nobody's "to blame" really, such is the nature of powerful commercialization. The much smaller productions simply cannot outcompete the blockbusters. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily a 'good' thing.
That's just how it is. By popular demand. Masses aren't always demanding what's 'best' for them.
Media do not write about the 'positive' stories. Negative is what sells the stuff, that's also commercialization. So I doubt we'll be reading about how Europe appreciates America and its products (or Americans appreciate Europe, mind you) anytime soon.

Just for fun dag, could you name some American products that Europeans DO appreciate having, and go out of their way to purchase and recommend to others?

Maybe I just need some of my national pride stroked here, but if there ARE American products and services that Europeans appreciate, I'd like to here about them.

This isn't about the food per se....I was obviously being facetious about the force feeding.

However, since I live in the U.S. and only see our advertising and such, it annoying at times to see products touted with the blaring message that, for instance is "something European woman use to make themselves look younger, fresher, more toned....etc"

The (fill in the blank for a European country) have discovered ways and products that are just so wonderful, and do the job so much better than us fat, lazy, stupid, crass, etc. Americans could ever come up with. The makeup we buy, clothes we wear, delicacies we eat, style of home, etc. etc. etc. are all somehow "better" if associated with some country other than our own.

It would be interesting for me to know of commercials or ads from other countries that say "This product is wonderful, all the Americans are using it!" or "my friend Marge looked great and I asked her what her secret was...she said it was this new cream developed in North Dakota"

My point is....It was kinda refreshing to hear the icons of sophistication for many Americans have feet of clay too...and are putting on a few pounds. But, I personally found it amusing that it just couldn't be said that it was because their lifestyle was changing, having less time to shop for foods, eating more quickly and in front of the TV, etc, and leaving it at that....you know, like it's their decision to do it? No....it somehow has to be mentioned that it's happening as a result of adopting parts of an American lifestyle....maybe it's just changing their lifestyle....period.

Ok, Europeans, I'd like to know....what American products and services get the nod of approval over there?

Many Europeans own rocking chairs and eat lobster bisque- and are happier for it. I'm not knocking all things American.

Maybe Europe should treat this problem the way America operates the War On Drugs. We destroy the poppy fields of Afganistan and the coca fields of Columbia to supposedly keep Americans away from drugs. America has a huge appetite for cocaine and smack, but we mostly go after the suppliers instead of Americans just stopping the bad behavior. I wonder if more people die each year from eating too much fast food or from snorting and shooting drugs? I think the French government needs to go start a big bon fire of double extra cheese burgers on the Champs Elysee.

Clothes! Nike, Levi's and many other brands I can't think of now, as it is
too early. American jeans have brought a great lifestyle to all around the
globe.

Gadgets is another one - iPhones, iPod etc. etc.

They won't be so happy when they try to squeeze their fat fast food asses into them and end up with "muffin tops" at the waist.

oh....you mean life this.....?

Many want the French government to get more involved. Its big health initiative in 2000 called for cutting the number of people who are obese or overweight by 20% by 2005. That didn't happen.

Consumer and child advocates want more radical measures. They aren't impressed by a new law that requires food advertisements to include a four-prong message promoting healthy eating. (At the movies, candy bars are sold with a reminder to eat your vegetables.) They're lobbying the National Assembly to prohibit all ads for unhealthful foods during children's programming and to make government "guidelines" for school lunchrooms compulsory.

Jean-Michel Cohen, France's most famous diet doctor, is among those who believe that only the government is powerful enough to counter global food companies that have been flooding supermarkets with sugary and fatty foods.


Like the French government going after the supplies of food, by prohibiting ads and requiring messages (read "warnings") on food instead of addressing the people who can give up their bad habits?

Candy bars with reminders to eat your vegetables?


CJ, thanks, good examples.

I think she meant that maybe they should bomb our corn syrup factories.

Yup.

what europeans appreciate?
i was also thinking of gadgets, and, of course, computers. Most of our computers were (not sure if that is still so) IBM, because US Congress sponsored purchasing of vast loads of them in Eastern Europe after communism fell. And there is Dell and Mac.... they are probably assembled all over the world now, but they are still american products.
Chewing gums (though i don't like them myself, or rather, people chewing around me).
Clothes, of course, as CJ mentioned..
Music... there are popular bands in Slovakia, but they play in their own league... there's just something to american popular music that cannot be beat by its counterparts elsewhere.... though i'm not sure that's a product per se...


So... now i'm wondering, why do you think it is, that commercials highlight 'swiss' cosmetics, or 'german' engineers... or this and that? Does that degrade America somehow? (I mean, we have precisely the same commercials in Europe: german engineers, swiss cosmetics, dutch chocolate.....). I'm also wondering, do you think Europeans feel the same about America? As in, not appreciated?

I have, of course, my own perspective, being a European living in America. I have friends and family on both continents and know what people in my circle think and feel... but I'm curious to see what people think for now.