When you need a little decadence

Wine, chocolate, and cheese are typically viewed as the dietary sins that you absolutely must stay away from if you want to control those growing belly bulges and saddle bags. The saturated fat, the cocoa butter, the empty alcohol calories! If we can agree on anything (the riff goes), it’s that these indulgences must be avoided altogether, or perhaps only doled out as food rewards for “being good”.

But this tired myopic advice completely loses its clarity as soon as you look at the eating behaviors of countries with low obesity rates, such as France. Even though they break all our eating rules (no low fat or low carb foods, they eat late at night, have long meals, eat the chocolate, cheese, and drink the wine), the International Obesity Task Force puts the current French obesity rate at 11.3 percent – it’s now over 30% for the US population. In fact, these famously thin people not only don’t avoid decadent foods that make you moan for more, they encourage you to have them every day!

The French eat for the sheer sensual pleasure, and chocolate makes the point perfectly. What’s more luscious than a rich melt-in-your-mouth piece of dark chocolate? But this decadence translated directly into a serious health boon (cocoa in an antioxidant, anti-platelet, increases your good cholesterol, and prevents the DNA damage that can lead to cancer formation). Even better, its natural chemicals stimulate the regions of your brain that light up when you’re in love … how can you go wrong? Except, perhaps, by listening to the Puritanical advice of people who want to convince you that this most perfect food is actually too sinful to be good for you.

Don’t listen to them. They’re just jealous.

And it’s not just the chocolate they wish they could enjoy with you. Along with the daily French meal comes the wine. Not a big gulp vat with a straw in it, just enough to enhance the menu. This wine, if taken at only 1-2 glasses per day, provides yet another trove of health benefits for your heart and even for cancer prevention – like the phenolic resveretrol and polyphenols that can increase your HDL and prevent platelet accumulation in your arteries. The World Health Organization’s MONICA project – which assessed the global risk of heart disease – showed that France was not only 3 times less likely to have heart disease than US citizens, but they had the lowest cardiac death rate in all of Europe.

They must be doing something right.

By meal’s end, the French always have cheese. As pointed out by 19th century French food writer Brillat-Savarin, “A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.” And these delicious dairy delights come out in subtle shades of texture, pungency, richness and not a single one of them are low in total or saturated fat. From the light Compte to the complexity of the layered Morbier and the rich heft of the mottled Reblochon, the pleasure is that it takes so long to get to know them all – there are more cheeses than there are days of the year.

The point to remember about consuming rich foods like cheese is that thin people with very low heart disease eat them every day. Maybe the scientific explanation behind it comes down to the mineral calcium found in dairy products, which we now know is involved in weight control – as found repeatedly by Dr. Michael Zemel and his colleagues. Or maybe it’s because the cholesterol hypothesis is struggling (A full one half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol. One half. From a predictive standpoint, that’s a coin flip.).

Be certain that research science will eventually figure out the reason the French can eat wonderful dairy products and still be thin and healthy. But, between then and now, you don’t have to wait for them to tell you WHY it’s true. You can take advantage of the French healthy eating habits right now!

Just do what they do, and you’ll get their results.

The French love all their wonderful bits of decadence at the table without guilt, and without consequence for their weight or health. Meanwhile we still label chocolate and cheese as the dietary Darth Vaders of the weight loss universe. But ironically, it’s actually because the French eat these wonderful foods that they have the success they do! And this changes wine, chocolate, and cheese from a decadence, to a prudent part of any healthy diet.

Wine, chocolate, and cheese are eaten by thin healthy French people every day.
If they can do that, you can too.

The reason they can do this comes down to moderation and sensible eating.

Find out more about Dr. Will Clower and the French diet on his website: www.willclower.com