French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano
Knopf, 2004

Review by Jennifer Sader

Vive La France!

Mireille Guilano has captivated media and public attention with her "anti-diet" book, French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure. The title was well-chosen to inspire discussion and debate. But the book offers more than just a catchy name. At its best, it offers a charming peek into another cultural mindset and another way of looking at food, pleasure, and life. Sprinkling her work with French phrases, recipes, and a few plugs for Veuve Clicquot Champagne (she's the CEO of the company), Madame Guilano offers an appealing and prosy work that paints a picture of a less-hurried lifestyle filled with three-course meals among friends in corner cafés, and mornings spent perusing open-air markets.

Mme. Guilano attributes American weight gain, and her own after a visit to America when she was in her teens, to a lifestyle that has us eating whatever we want, whenever we want as we race from one place to another. Rediscovering the pleasures of food (and wine) as an event and a ritual of its own, she says, can allow us to be satisfied with our meals without supersizing portions. She suggests that by choosing better-quality, minimally-processed foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables in season, we can retrain palates that have become accustomed to too much sugar, fat, and salt.

By choosing our indulgences carefully, we can have the things we want and still achieve and maintain a healthy weight. "You can have de tout un peu et de peu pas beaucoup," she wisely says, which roughly translates to, "You can have a little of everything—a little, not a lot".

Curiously she contradicts her herself by peppering a few "diet-like" cure-alls throughout the book. Her kick-start weekend of "magical leek soup" seems to go against the idea that we should cultivate a new outlook rather than look for a quick fix. The other "magical" elements in this book seem to be a way to satisfy readers who are looking for tricks rather than a new outlook. Despite her contradictions, this book is a delightful morsel—a quick, fun read with a lot of wisdom.

The book doesn't offer a lot of new information—most of us know we should be eating less and moving more—but it does offer a refreshing outlook. The best thing about French Women Don't Get Fat, is its attitude that the goal should not be model-thinness but a weight that helps a person feel "bien dans sa peau," or comfortable in his or her skin. Americans are so used to feeling guilty about punishing ourselves for our pleasures that the idea that we should cultivate a richer appreciation for food is almost revolutionary. These ideas may not seem new to Cooking Thin fans who are used to Kathleen's, "Baby steps repeated over time equals lifelong success" philosophy, but it's fun to have them repeated with a French accent. Like Kathleen, Mme. Guilano is also an advocate of exercise, especially walking and stairs, rather than high-intensity gym workouts. Apparently French women don't sweat, either.

Jennifer Sader is a freelance writer, part-time doctoral student and recreational athlete. She has completed several sprint and international distance triathlons and three half-marathons. Her next goal is to do the Columbus Marathon. She is supported in all her endeavors by her wonderful husband of ten years, Jesse Squire, who inspired her to do her first competitive event, a 5K run, at the ripe old age of 20. Email Jennifer Sader: jensader@yahoo.com

Photo: András