In France, fat makes an entrée

The problem is nowhere near as bad as it is in the United States, where 65% of the population has serious weight problems, or in parts of southern Europe such as Spain and Portugal, where the vaunted Mediterranean diet hasn't helped the one-third of the children who are more than just plump.

But people here have gotten away from the concept of food as a luxury eaten in modest quantities. Bread, for instance, has always been a staple, especially when people didn't have enough money for meat or cheese. Now the French can have all three -- and do.

The lifestyle of the wealthy West has also caught up with France. Working parents increasingly don't have time to shop at outdoor markets and instead use processed foods, often frozen, from the supermarket. And there is more snacking, less savoring going on.

French parents, politicians and doctors are in a panic, believing that if they don't focus now on prevention and reverse the trend, particularly among children, rampant obesity will become another American import, worse even than McDonald's and Disney movies.

Already, 42% of the French population is either overweight or obese, according to the National Institute for Health and Medical Research, known by its French initials, Inserm. The rate among children and adolescents has quadrupled in the last 25 years and has been growing almost as fast as in the United States.

"If you look at the statistical curve, we're now where the U.S. was in the 1970s," said Olivier Andrault, a food expert with the French Union of Consumers. "It means if we do nothing, in a few years the French will be as fat as Americans."

The country noticed its expanding waistline in the late 1990s, when a once-a-decade study by Inserm turned up a slight increase in the numbers of obese women. It was a statistical blip, but epidemiologists, aware of the pandemic elsewhere, launched more frequent studies -- and found a growing trend. Economically deprived areas in the north were the hardest hit.

Initially, many were in disbelief that a French person could get as fat as one of those soda-slurpers in American sitcoms. In part, that was because of an enduring faith in what outsiders enviously refer to as the "French paradox." Here was a nation that has relied heavily on rivers of red wine, more than 300 varieties of cheese, patisseries full of buttery desserts, and still managed to maintain a low rate of heart disease and obesity. Portion control and a habit of cooking with fresh food inevitably helped.

Nothing better marketed the image of effortless French thinness than Mireille Guiliano's 2004 book, "French Women Don't Get Fat," a runaway bestseller in the United States. A petite Champagne company executive living in New York, Guiliano has had Americans dreaming that they, too, could eat foie gras and chocolate -- a taste of this and a taste of that -- and stay slim.

But for the French translation, the title had to be changed to "These French Women Who Don't Get Fat: How Do They Do It?" Here, it was marketed (with modest success) to women with weight problems who envy that "girl in the office who eats a box of chocolates at her desk and never gains an ounce," said Elsa Lafon, daughter of the French publisher.

"Obviously, French women do get fat!" she said. "Obviously, they don't have time to cook and shop and live like Mireille! She's a wonderful hostess, but in many ways she's your worst nightmare, with a beautiful house . . . a great husband. She's what we all want to look like, be like, but it's impossible."

The French food culture that Guiliano portrays is struggling for survival against a lifestyle in which people are drifting away from the ritual of three balanced meals, exercising less and eating larger quantities.

Yes, occasionally a construction crew unfolds a metal table on a city sidewalk, throws on a cloth and puts out lunch, all three courses. But increasingly the pressure to work through the sacrosanct midday meal has driven people to skip the formule midi at a cafe and scarf down a sandwich at their desk. And instead of the classic fresh bread smeared with butter for breakfast, more French children are digging into bowls of sugary cereal.

"When your mother cuts a piece of bread and adds a bit of jam and butter, she can check just how much sugar is in breakfast," consumer advocate Andrault said. "But the percentage of sugar in a breakfast cereals ranges from 30 to 50%, which is big and making our kids bigger."

The average French person still spends 30 minutes a day cooking, according to a report by the research firm Euromonitor International, but that figure is rapidly falling.

And, if what emerged at a recent Weight Watchers meeting in a Paris suburb is true, more French women not only don't have time to cook, they don't know how.

Most of these Weight Watchers had come straight from work to the gathering in a restaurant in Le Raincy, a middle-class suburb about an hour's drive through miserable traffic from the center of Paris. After the typical round of confessions of one too many squares of chocolate and nibbles at the charcuterie, Patricia, the group leader, held up a set of white plastic measuring spoons and asked, "Does everyone know what this is?"

There were 30 women in the room and no one said a word.