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Comment by jajko | Hacker News Reader

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.

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People also tend to be much more frank and will absolutely roast you when you start getting fat. Everyone under 30 eats the same shit as in any other western country, we don't make ratatouille and boeuf bourguignon every day, for example we are the EU country with the most mcdonald's

You can also take a green salad in the standard McDonald's menus instead of french fries, and I think this is specific to French McDonald's.

We have this in Australian McDonald's also

Salads aren't always good: https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/assets/referentiel/file/1482...

Yes it's not the salad as remplacement for the burger, it's more green salad without any meat that replaces french fries in your burger menu.

This is the key distinction IMO.

The French smoke and drink and eat crap food just like everyone else.

They just don't mess about in my experience. If you are fat, you are fat. You're not body positive, you're not big boned, you don't have a slow metabolism, you're not in a food desert, you're not even obese, you're just fat. Sort it out.

They're not afraid of calling a spade a spade.

It really is that simple when you aren't surrounded by enablers.

> food desert

There are absolutely places, at least here in the U.S., where food deserts really are a thing though.

I live in the south and there are places here where you can't buy fresh produce for miles. I don't live in such a place but I've been to these kinds of places.

Eating frozen and/or low quality food will not make you fat. Especially stuff like frozen veg and chicken fillets.

You might have trouble if you literally only eat Cheetos and get no nutrients. You're more likely to become malnourished and sickly than obese that way.

Also, chest freezers exist, nothing is stopping you from driving and loading up the car/truck for a month or more. In the UK a 200 mile round trip would cost £30 or less in fuel, my understanding is that you Americans pay half of that.

The question ultimately comes down to whether you want it enough. I can already see the next gotcha being "what if you don't have a car" or something. Sure, if you are a waster then doing literally anything is hard, self fulfilling prophecy.

You'd find a way regardless of your fresh produce situation if everybody called you a lardass every day.

We're not talking about being healthy, we're talking about not being obese. You can absolutely lose weight eating awful shit every day; I'm doing it right now. In a fucked up way, it's easy. Look at calories in the drive-thru/on the wrapper and just stay below your target. That's what multiple people are saying in these comments -- they aren't necessarily being healthy, they are just not eating enough to become fat.

This is a failure of government to incentivize availability.

One can't buy fresh produce in my region of the world for the better part of a year (9-10 months) because of harsh climate combined with long distances from the ocean and major railroads, and we have almost no fat people at all. Vegetables and fruit are sold even in the middle of winter, but they're extremely expensive, more so than meat.

India is dodging the obesity trend?

India has one of the fastest growing rated of diabetes and obesity, as observed with economies where incomes are rising across the board. Not to mention Indian food being extremely unhealthy in general across the board (save for some vegetarian cuisines).

China is also seeing an uptick in obesity rates and diabetes, etc as more folks move from rice carbs to sugars, and from veggies to pork.

Indian food is not all heavy greasy curries though, I imagine the day to day cuisine is much healthier than Chicken Tikka Masala.

It's more about what is cheap and readily available. Most indian fast food (like their western counterparts) is pretty bad.

Have Indian relatives and can confirm that lots of the home cooked stuff is greasy too. Fried sugar jalebis anyone.

> Not to mention Indian food being extremely unhealthy in general across the board (save for some vegetarian cuisines)

So, except for the majority of it? A lot of Indians are strict vegetarians and even among the meat eaters, they still generally eat a lot of non-meat dishes.

"Some" vegetarian cuisines. What I had in mind was specifically South Indian Udupi vegetarian cuisine, which you'd find at Saravana Bhavans the world over. The vast majority of North Indian vegetarian cuisine is still unhealthy fried food, server with dollops of ghee.

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