Tuesday 12 August 2014

Sizes in French and England


 

Something I've found really surprising since France is how the size of the populations differs. The English are significantly and obviously larger than the French. Obviously I haven't done a study into this or anything and I was only in one part of France but simply considering that the two areas are so close, have similar agriculture, similar levels of poverty and similar populations (I think) do make it surprising that I've so clearly noticed a difference in body size. Its 'easy' for me, I've inherited the skinny gene (allowing me to wear skinny jeans.......
 terrible joke I know!) and I've often defended obesity due to poverty, in Hartlepool and England it is often a sign of poverty - its a lot cheaper to live, eating fast, fatty foods and for a lot of people it isn't really a choice. Where I stayed in Rennes isn't a posh area however, I believe its very comparable to Hartlepool but the fast, fatty food isn't the cheap stuff, people aren't always eating, their lives don't seem to revolve so much around foods. Cycling and walking is more prevalent there, the roads are safer and planned for cyclists.... We've become accustomed to seeing people of a certain size here in England - and its not a healthy size, I'm biased but being overweight carries significant health consequences - I can't stress that enough and with that comes massive additional costs, to many aspects of the NHS - a company struggling tremendously already. I think a lot of the 'issue' is an attitude one, everyone knows the French have amazing, delicious food - I ate fabulously there. We didn't have tea breaks with biscuits every few hours, we ate a lot of bread - the fast food there. The hospital diet in France wasn't chips and there was fish a few times every week, the patients ate the fruit provided and puddings were fruit compote. The patients didn't have sweets and chocolates from their families piled up - their attitude to foods is very different... Do I think the UK Government are doing enough? Just something to think about... or I suppose maybe they're all just thin because they smoke a lot more...

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