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Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?

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yovargas
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 3:39 pm
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I think the real answer is that Europeans are better than everyone at everything.


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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 3:50 pm
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Seriously, interesting answers, everyone.

I'm sure it's not a simple answer but a combination of many factors--not the least of which might be genetic predisposition. (And that might be the most basic of factors.) Combine genetics with culture and lifestyle, and there you go.

I will look for the book Jude recommended. I don't need to be convinced about serving portions. I already know they're huge, as they're more than I can eat. (I do take it home, and either Freddy or I will eat for another meal later on.) It does make eating out a little more budget-friendly, when you know that you're going to get two meals out of the deal.

I am hoping that I don't have to get to the point of counting calories; it is a tedious thing that I will fail at, I'm sure. I'm all about trying to pick healthier foods and eating smaller portions. Then, I need to exercise.

I was wondering, do you all eat several small meals a day or just three big ones?


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Jude
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 4:50 pm
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Another thing about the French - I say the French because this really struck me when I went to Paris a few years back - is that they have a completely different relationship to the food than we North Americans have. The eating, the rituals that go with it, the care that goes into the preparation of the food itself and all the trappings that go with a communal meal, are taken very seriously.

Even if you eat whatever you want, if you concentrate on it, take time to do it properly to really appreciate it, you will get a whole lot more satisfaction and "filling-ness" (sorry, best word I could come up with :oops: ) than if you grab something and "eat on the run".

That's a major part of the problem here - food is not respected, and not noticed - so you eat a whole lot more junk without even realizing it.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 4:55 pm
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That is very, very true!


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Nienor SharkAttack
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 5:02 pm
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LalaithUrwen wrote:
I was wondering, do you all eat several small meals a day or just three big ones?
Just three big meals a day is definitely not a good idea for anyone trying to lose weight.

I eat - *counts* - six meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, something-in-between, half a dinner, the rest of the dinner, a little something in the evening. There are three hours between each meal, and I never go hungry. The trick of splitting the dinner helped me lose ten kilos (before I did that, I'd always become awfully hungry again two-three hours after dinner, no matter how much I'd eaten). And, in my experience, once you get used to eating small meals it simply becomes difficult eating big onces.

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Nin
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 5:30 pm
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I ate only three meals and lost weight and quickly with it.....

It's also important to give your stomach time without food.

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Di of Long Cleeve
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 6:51 pm
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LalaithUrwen wrote:
I was wondering, do you all eat several small meals a day or just three big ones?

Lali

I eat three main meals: breakfast (consisting of cereal -- or toast -- and fruit) ... sandwiches and fruit for my lunch hour (I work full time) and a main dinner in the evening -- pasta, chicken or fish, usually, with yoghurt and fruit for dessert ... it's so tiring having to cook for oneself at the end of a long working day and my commute from London to the suburbs is over an hour long. So my main meals are simple and quick. My favourite quick 'n' easy meal being spaghetti with pesto sauce, usually throwing in mushrooms and tomatoes or courgettes (zucchini to Americans) as well ...

I do try not to snack in between meals, and if I do feel like snacking, to snack on fruit, but sometimes ... I can't resist the call of chocolate. :blackeye: I eat GOOD chocolate though. :D Like the wonderful Green&Black's dark organically produced chocolate, which is seriously yum.
Jude wrote:
Another thing about the French - I say the French because this really struck me when I went to Paris a few years back - is that they have a completely different relationship to the food than we North Americans have. The eating, the rituals that go with it, the care that goes into the preparation of the food itself and all the trappings that go with a communal meal, are taken very seriously.
That is very true. :)

The French are food aesthetes. ;) I wouldn't say the same was true of the English. :halo:

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 7:06 pm
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Like I keep saying, real chocolate is healthy. The problem with the crap you get in the supermarket checkouts is the added sugar and hydrogenated oils, not the chocolate itself. Actually, there's probably very little chocolate left in those "candy bars" once all the processing is done.

So, feel free to eat all the Green & Black chocolate that you want! I certainly do, and don't feel guilty at all. :D

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The Watcher
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 9:14 pm
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Well, I know I have some terrible habits. I skip breakfast for the most part, and everything I have heard or read says that is so bad for you. But aside from beverages like tea, water, or juices, I really do not WANT FOOD when I wake up. Lunch may be a bit of leftovers from the night before with fruit and veg, and then dinner is whatever we have on hand, usually some sort of homecooked thing, but it might often be based on chicken or ground beef. I have lost my taste for highly seasoned or overly fatty foods, when I claim that I like butter, I do, but I can only take it in small amounts.

Snacking for me has never worked, since I really do not HAVE an appetite, and there is where I need to kick up my metabolism with more serious exercise, since right now, after having dropped many pounds, I have hit that sort of plateau, and need to move more than anything else.

But I have heard that eating several smaller snacking sorts of meals is better than eating fewer really big ones, and what Jude said about the time and preparation and enjoyment of a meal also makes sense. Chowing down a bad fast food burger and a drink in the car is not dining, it is not even really eating. It is merely consuming calories.

To be honest, I really do NOT enjoy fast food at all, I find now that it really disagrees with me for the most part. Even while in Chicago, I only could barely finish one piece of deep dish veggie pizza, and the next day at lunch, I gave half of my Chicago style Italian beef sandwich away.

I know in my case it is metabolic rates, and, sigh, the only answer there is to get my metabolic rates up much higher, which means exercise, which I am long out of practice with.

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elfshadow
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 9:47 pm
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The Watcher wrote:
Well, I know I have some terrible habits. I skip breakfast for the most part, and everything I have heard or read says that is so bad for you. But aside from beverages like tea, water, or juices, I really do not WANT FOOD when I wake up.
As a quick side note, once you start eating breakfast you probably will be hungry in the mornings. All through middle school and high school I almost never ate breakfast, because I didn't want food when I woke up either. But once I started eating breakfast, even though it was difficult at first, I started to be hungry as soon as I got up. So I think it's just something people have to get used to. :) Not eating breakfast isn't necessarily "bad for you", I think, but it's not a good start to the day for your metabolism. Eating breakfast will raise your metabolism throughout the day. You'll also have a lot more energy than you would if you just drank coffee or something in the morning. I have a small breakfast, a yogurt and maybe a piece of toast with jam, and if I don't eat it I'm miserable and irritable for the next few hours.


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Riverthalos
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 22 Nov , 2008 10:05 pm
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I used to have a strained relationship with breakfast. I felt guilty about it, like I wasn't enough of a go-getter because I ate breakfast. Freshman year of college, I stopped eating it. Sophomore year and beyond, a few things changed and I got back into the breakfast habit but still felt terribly guilty about it. Halfway through my first year of grad school, I met S and, in the course of making me his regular skiing/snowboarding buddy he also began a regular campaign of :salmon: until I understood how stupid it is to feel guilty about eating breakfast.

I think Europeans just take a more moderate approach to life in general (including in moderation :P). Seriously. Here in the US it seems like either you're self-destructing or you're a health nut. No in-betweens allowed. You're either burning the candle at both ends or you're a shiftless loser. No in-betweens. Etc. We also like instant gratification maybe a bit too much. And all of that mucks with our collective heads and bodies.

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Nin
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sun 23 Nov , 2008 9:23 am
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River, when the nutrionist made up my programm to losse weight, he told me to skip breakfast and not to eat in the morning - also that I would not feel tired and hungry, after a few days and that it was perfectly normal and fine for someone with my metabolism, as I am all in all rather an evening person. I was :Q : skipping breakfast in a diet.

I feel better if I don't eat or eat only very, very little in the morning. As my main meal is in the evenin, there is energy left from it and really I think it's very personal with how much food and when your body functions best.

And well ,yes, preparation, presentation of food is important. I take care in varying colours of vegetable (one green, one colored at table), varying sorts of rice (once basmati, once perfumed, once Risotto), shapes and colours of pasta, etc etc. Often at lunch I'll have a salad but ingredients will differ every day.

And I stopped snacking, almost completely. It als helped me to drink less cofee and more tea and if drink coffee, a strong espresso not light coffee which makes you hungry.

And although I don't live in France but five minutes from the border, the food culture we have here is French.

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Leoba
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sun 23 Nov , 2008 11:12 am
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Nin wrote:
British food is horrid, sorry. When I was 15 I spent three weeks in Great-Britain and lost 10 kilos to come back on teh edge of anorexia - but I could not eat that horrible food. Don't you make any real bread with real cereales, crusty? Only toast?
I think it's about time you came over for another visit.:P English food (I can't speak for the rest of the UK) has undergone a revolution in recent years. Our bread is 'real' (homemade, no preservatives) although by no means as dense as the rye bread you get in Germany and Switzerland. We eat lots of veg (often homegrown), pulses, beans, organic meat... I could go on (but neither do we stint on chocolate or cream!). And we're not unusual; pretty much everyone I know eats healthily and cooks from scratch with quality ingredients (maybe that says more about the people I know than the British in general though).

I think I keep in shape partly because I have a sensible diet, but I also have a metabolism that burns up calories at a fast rate (Din and I eat the same and he does struggle to keep the calories from sticking!). I also exercise - I go to a Pilates class once a week, I walk around London (I'm sure all the walking is why Londoners on the whole are slimmer than people in the provinces) and I don't sit still (at home I'm out in the garden whenever the weather permits).

I suspect that the prevalence of processed foods (and the sugar added to them) are perhaps the main reason why people in the 'west' are struggling with their size.

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Riverthalos
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sun 23 Nov , 2008 7:00 pm
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My breakfast complex is staging a comeback. :P

No, in all seriousness, I actually need breakfast. My blood sugar goes wonky on me if I don't eat frequently. I'm a grazer.

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eärendil
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Fri 28 Nov , 2008 4:05 pm
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Lots of things have already been said and I guess there is nothing much I can add, but I do certainly agree with Estel that sometimes being "overweight" as they say can come from something that has nothing to do with the "unhealthy" way of life.
I have had hypothyroid for the past 2 years now... without changing my eating and sports habits I gained some weight over a few months and I found myself extremely tired. At first I thought that it was job stress because I was working stupid hours and had more responsibilities than ever before in my life. But when I could not get up without feeling tired I went to see a doctor. There have been thyroid issues in my family (my mum and bro had hyper, my dad's mother and grandma have or had hypo). My TSH was all over the place and it took them about a year to figure out the proper dose for me. In the meantime I continued to gain weight... even if I was going to the gym every other day and did not change much of my eating habit.

I have been losing these extra 10kg slowly for the past couple of months but it is a struggle because I can't play volleyball as much as I used to. Actually I really have to kick myself in the butt and do my regular 4 hours a week and I'll feel better :lol:... And I don't work, I am actively looking for a job but it is hard to find something and it takes some of my energy (I hate doing nothing it depresses me :roll:). It also makes it hard to create a social network here in Toronto...

Now about the relation to food, I guess that what you said is true about the French. The meal, evening meal in this case, has always been some family thing at my parents'. We would all sit together, spend some time talking around the food that my mum would prepare (or my dad, and later that was me and my sister most of the time). Eating is mostly about being together and share the events of the day, important or not. So food is being eaten more slowly (better for digesting) and becomes part of this ritual.
But then again this summer a friend of my mum's said to my bf "you know that you are with French people when during a meal they actually talk about food and what would make a good next meal."
It is also funny because when I read this thread the first time (a couple of days ago), I spent most of my afternoon in the kitchen. I prepared a mushroom soup, a zucchini-feta gratin and an apple pie. My bf was there and helping me; so it is something that we do together, something that we share.
In the end we don't eat as much or as fast, because it took time to prepare so we want to appreciate it even more (and it was pretty damn good, I am quite proud of ourselves because it was the first time we were preparing that soup ;)).

Now my main meal is usually lunch... because I got used to working 1pm-9:30pm and it was out of order to cook anything when I came back home (when I had roommates). You can't really bang the pans and pots at 11pm when they get up at 5:30-6am to go to work, that would be mean. So usually I would prepare some quick salad or have a yogurt and drink some infusion... And I can't sleep if I eat too much at night. Last night, I had some soup and a bit of the gratin (left-overs of the day before). That was it...
So unlike Nin, I do have a breakfast. Because when you don't really eat at night, you're pretty damn hungry in the morning :roll:.
Depends on my mood really and that of my bf; cereals, toasts, eggs and bacon, crepes. And always some tea (a pot actually). This morning we had an omelette and we know we won't eat before 6pm tonight which will be dinner... Maybe a fruit or a yogurt in between but that's it.

The truth is that I always found it easier to lose weight when I was not worrying about it and when I felt good both emotionally and physically. When I arrived in Canada in 2004, I lost the 22pounds I had gained in Ireland by not worrying about them, being myself, starting to play in a musical, playing volleyball and doing things I loved.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 29 Nov , 2008 3:36 am
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Thanks, everyone, for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I guess there is just not one answer, is there?


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eärendil
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 29 Nov , 2008 5:43 pm
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I guess there are many answer... and also because you find that in Europe there are currently setting rules to avoid overweight which becomes apparently more of a problem (I know that there is a law on the way in France ;)).

I guess it depends on each individual... and how they relate to food.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 29 Nov , 2008 6:23 pm
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What do you mean by setting rules to avoid overweight? :confused:

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eärendil
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sat 29 Nov , 2008 6:35 pm
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Jude wrote:
What do you mean by setting rules to avoid overweight? :confused:
Well first, like in Sharky's place, you can't have snacks machine in secondary and high schools. They have made it illegal.
Now every time there's an ad about food they have the obligation to have something say "for a good healthy diet you must eat that much vegetable and fruit portions during the day"

Then there are talks about a set of laws to increase taxes on junk food or anything that is not "healthy" like chocolate, candies, fast food things etc...
And they are talking about changing rules for the reimbursement of obese/overweight people in the health care system.

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Estel
Post subject: Re: Why are Europeans thinner (on average) than Americans?
Posted: Sun 30 Nov , 2008 10:40 am
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eärendil wrote:
And they are talking about changing rules for the reimbursement of obese/overweight people in the health care system.
That scares the shit out of me.

That just perpetuates the idea that all overweight and obese people are that way because they're lazy and unwilling to change. No admitting that it may be for genetic reasons or other health issues that are causing the weight? Humans tried for thousands of years to be as fat as possible because that was a sign of being successful. Now, within the last century fashion for that has changed, and the people who don't change with the times fast enough might be punished.

When's it going to stop if that happens? Different rules for reimbursement now, but maybe someday someone with skin cancer will have to pay for their own treatment because 20 years ago they used to go to a tanning salon? A non-smoker has to pay for their own treatment for lung cancer because they chose to stay with a partner who smoked? A person with diabetes is refused treatment because they've been 20 pounds overweight for 10 years.


I can't think of much that scares me more than that attitude.


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