Big Beautiful U

We are always hearing about how thin the French people are compared to us in the United States and we have been told that different factors figure into this “difference”.  Even though the French have higher fat foods and desserts, they supposedly eat smaller portions, which keeps their weight down.  The French also claim to walk more in their country compared to us “couch potatoes” here.

Research may have found the real reason why the French keep the pounds off: 

In deciding when it’s time to push away from the table, it seems that the French may be responding to different eating signals than Americans. In a recent study, researchers from my Cornell Food Lab asked 133 participants from Paris and 145 from Chicago to complete a brief survey on their food habits, posing the question “How do you know when you are through eating dinner?”

The Parisians said they knew they were through when they no longer felt hungry or when the food no longer tasted good to them. Their answers suggested that they’re influenced by internal cues — whether they liked the taste of the food or whether they wanted to leave room for a later dessert — to tell them dinner’s over.

In Chicago, it was a different ball game. The 145 Americans relied on external cues of satiety. They said they knew they were through eating when they cleaned their plate, when everyone else at the table was finished or when the TV show they were watching was over.

The Americans were more influenced by their environment than whether they were actually still hungry.

source