Investigating the “French Paradox”
Intersections of health, food, and culture
In summer 2022, EURO major Paige Baldelli received an ESRA to study disparities in health outcomes and food culture between US and European societies. Below is a summary of her findings.
I wake up in my 10x10 apartment on Rue de la Tour in the 16th arrondissement, stomach growling. My mini fridge empty, I grab my tote bags to brave the Paris streets below for some weekend grocery shopping. I consider doing my shopping at the nearby Monoprix (the French equivalent to Super Target, where an eggplant, lipstick, bathmats can be purchased in the same trip) but I instead opt for a row of shops on Rue des Belles Feuilles. I purchase cheese from a fromagerie, bread from a boulangerie, and a rotisserie chicken from a boucherie. I get the items I need from a specialized store for each, shop attendants displaying their products with pride in the storefront.
Food is a serious matter here. Mealtimes are long as people sit down and truly taste and consider the food in front of them. Gastronomy is understood as an integral component to French culture and tourism; thoughts of bread, wine, cheese, and lots of butter come to mind when I imagine France. To American minds, these are foods that are unhealthy, fattening, even “bad” — bad enough to make someone fat. However, these high-fat foods are core components to the typical French diet and yet, French society still values thinness, French people (generally) remain thin, and rates of heart disease remain relatively low. How can both realities be true?
This seemingly contradictory phenomenon is known as the French Paradox. The idea is based in the fact that the French eat rich foods high in saturated fats and still have lower rates of heart disease than Americans. More casually, the Paradox can include the commonly accepted notion that the French are thinner than Americans. Researchers believe that the paradox is due to the French attitude towards food, where that, they love it. They love cooking, eating, and indulging in food, and do these things with intention. They are mindful about what they eat and take the time to enjoy and savor their meals. The French eat for pleasure, not for convenience. On the other hand, the fast-paced American culture and lifestyle has many people eating quickly and heedlessly, making more processed foods a primary component of American diet. While the French more so associate food with pleasure, Americans have been found to associate it more with health, and from this mindset emerges a diet culture that glorifies thinness to a harmful extent and imposes food rules that reduce food to a purely functional thing. As I lived in France in the Spring of 2022, my curiosity of this paradox grew and I decided to investigate further with my European Summer Research Award, specifically as to how diet culture and disordered eating behaviors manifest in a culture that loves food rather than demonizes it.
I conducted my research through an online survey distributed through mine and my professors’ network of peers and classmates and through Prolific, collecting a sample of 174 American college students and 49 French students. My survey assessed respondents for their level of exhibition of eating disorder behaviors and their general attitude towards food by having them rank their level of agreement with statements on a scale of 1 to 5. This being my first self-led study, there are many things I would have done differently throughout my research for more tailored and accurate insights, like having a wider rating scale to allow for more varied responses and greater opportunity to reflect differences. I had hypothesized that French students would display a significantly more positive cultural attitude towards food, and significantly less disordered eating behaviors. The data revealed that French students did indeed hold more positive attitudes toward food, however, levels of exhibition of eating disorder behaviors was largely the same between French and American respondents, failing to confirm my hypothesis and suggesting that the impacts of diet culture supersede nationality. Though the results of my study were unexpected, I am so grateful to my ESRA award for the opportunity to explore the anthropology of food in France and to more thoughtfully consider how my life experiences compare to that of my French counterparts.
The ESRA is funded be generous donations from Betsy Blackwell and John Watson.
