How is France dodging the global obesity trend?

As someone living in France, there's something which doesn't get enough attention.

Everyone in France (okay, almost everyone) "does sport". It's drilled into kids that they need to have some sort of physical activity, and it's one of the things people getting to know each other ask one another - what sort of sport do you take a part in. There are "hype" sports like wall climbing, quite popular in some of the big cities; there are more communal (football/basketball/etc.) ones; there's swimming etc etc. But it's normal and expected that you do something.

IMO this is more important contributor than the cuisine, which although quite "natural", includes lots of meat, cheese, sauces (not American style sauce with sugar + corn syrup + a bunch of chemicals, more like blue cheese-based sauces) etc. which aren't the most calorie light foods.

I have a lot of family in france, I have citizenship and lived there for about a decade earlier in my life. Not really as a french person but not quite as an expat either.

The thing that struck me wasn't so much about the quality of the food per se but just how much weight of ritual there was around it. I would see average working class families sit down for an hour+ dinner with appetizer, salad, cheese course every single day. It wasn't particularly fancy or extremely labor-intensive, usually at least one course was just repurposed leftovers from a day or two earlier. It was pretty "normal" food but set out so that eating it just took a while.

Similarly basically every worker, even low-prestige hourly laborers, was fully entitled to take a 90 minute lunch and they did, every single day. These rhythms of time and food were clearly valued highly, respect for them was built into the structures of daily life at the legal and social level. It communicates to people that how you eat matters, that it is something to pay attention to.

Snacking between meals was heavily discouraged as well, almost stigmatized even. It was considered childish, something you were expected to have grown out of needing to do routinely as an adult.

I also remember a clear sense of skepticism and even contempt for convenience and fast foods. This was about twenty years ago now and I understand that's relaxed considerably since then, especially with young people. But I think it's clear that natural french conservatism served them right here: they were correct to resist incorporating these foods into their lifestyle.

I imagine this is the classic Hacker News "everyone reads the title but not the article" effect, but the question posed here isn't why is France's obesity rate low. It's lower than global leaders like Egypt and the US but that's true in a lot of places. However, in those places, including places like India and China being cited in other comments, as well as places like Japan with historically very low rates, they've still increased, often very drastically, since 1990. It's only in Germany, where obesity rates have been pretty flat since around 2008, and France, which actually has a lower obesity rate today than in 1990, that this increase hasn't happened.

The answer can't just be "well, their cuisine is X, Y, Z" or "they shame fat people more." Those things were also true in 1990. Something during these 30 years had to have actually changed to counteract an otherwise globally consistent trend seen across all cuisines and cultures. I don't feel remotely qualified or informed enough to judge the reality of it, but the article has hypotheses. Specifically, German food culture has changed, with younger generations favoring less calorie dense foods than traditional German food, and in France, government campaigns to get people to eat less and move more seem to have actually worked in spite of failing just about everywhere else they've been tried.

And, for what it's worth, I have plenty of personal experience with fat shaming culture. I served in the active duty US Army in my 20s, and there is tremendous pressure to stay lean and fit. It's a literal job requirement. The military is the only employer I'm aware of that legally can and will fire you for being fat even when you have a non-public facing office job. You'll be brutally mocked by peers, often with the encouragement of command, no one will have any respect for you, and your chances of advancing are nil. Nonetheless, even in the active duty military, all data I can find indicate that rates of overweight and obesity have at least doubled during this same period. This, in spite of being forced to exercise and having all the healthy food in the world available at a low price. A whole lot of people simply choose fast food and beer anyway, even with every economic incentive pointing in the other direction.

Many “skinnier” countries use natural foods and cook all their meals. And that means no shortcuts with canned food, few spice bottles, etc.

I think that is part of it, plus their plates have more vegetables.

A lot of our meats in the US have hormones these days. Plus almost everything boxed, canned or packaged has sugar, fructose, corn syrup or the fake sugar for zero calories- none of which are good.

See also, the "French Paradox" [1] of how despite high saturated fat intake via cheese that heart health is still fine in France.

To add to the point about milk fat, butter has been shown to not be much related to heart disease in observational studies (/study) [2], which is not the case for eggs despite popular belief supporting eggs as gram-for-gram being healthier than butter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927102/

Intense but ultimately effective “fat people are ugly” culture

I’ve lived in France for a year and visited numerous times for a few weeks or a month.

I have eaten quite well over there including foods that aren’t exactly healthy.

I never gained weight while in France. I often come back having lost weight. My exercise isn’t consistent there either.

I suspect it’s the quality of the ingredients and the cuisine.

Well look at French culture and history - always focus on quality of the cuisine, the taste experience, quality of ingredients, preparing meal is often a family/friends social ritual. Anybody who ever went through proper Michelin * experience can tell stories.

Naturally you put healthier stuff inside compared to some cheap quick to make fast food stuff. And if +- whole nation is having this sort of mindset, you see result when rest of the world is moving to cheaper-and-faster. Also, french are comparably fanatics to being active/outdoorsy (while having properly beautiful country to utilize). Good mix for good health.

Now why China and India see similar trend can be a different topic - their cuisine is good to excellent, but mentality, genetics etc is very different.