2 Essential French Food Secrets That'll Change The Way You Eat Forever

After recently spending a few weeks in the South of France surfing, eating ice cream, drinking wine and eating crepes at lunch like the rest of the country, I couldn’t help but notice that almost no one was overweight. In fact, according worldobesity.org, France’s obesity rate for both men and women is less than half that of the U.S. population.

Turns out, there are two.

Everything (with the exception of taste) was small. I mean, a lunch portion was served ona plate the size of a saucer. This took some getting used to, since I'm a Texas girl used to eating a big plate of Mexican food, a basket of chips and salsa, and maybe a margarita in one sitting.

One afternoon before a big surf session, I ordered an entree and a salad. The lovely waitress said to me with questioning eyes? “Les deux?” (both of them?) like I was a giant Texas hog that didn’t understand French. I explained to her that I was paddling out and needed extra calories and she shrugged her shoulders with a bit of disdain and put my order in.

I had ordered some calamari. Again, a portion of a small saucer with a few veggies on the side and a little bowl with two tiny pieces of baguette in it. Just enough to soak up the leftover juice. No more.

It actually seemed pretty amazing that I could be satisfied with so little food. Notice I said satisfied instead of full. There is a big difference. In the U.S., we say to children after they eat, “Are you full?” In France, they say, “Are you satisfied?”

I am afraid we are conditioning our children to look for a feeling of being stuffed rather than being satisfied.

You see, I think we may be patently insatiable. We are so hungry, and truthfully, we don't even know what it is. I wonder what would happen if we focused on better instead of more. Would we be more nourished, more satisfied, and less inclined to overeat?

As a personal experiment, I am devoting more time to cooking and shopping at my farmer’s market. I’m using mostly fresh foods and herbs which are more expensive, but interestingly, my grocery bills have not gone up because it seems like everyone in my home is eating less. Because I am taking the time to prepare better meals, we are sitting down to eat them together more often.

Nothing in life is free, and bigger and better do not come without a cost. We have sacrificed the quality and taste of our food to make it more affordable so we can consume more. We have sacrificed good ingredients and accepted preservatives in the name of convenience, and who knows what the cost to our our health, and the health of our future generations will be? As a fertility specialist for the last 17 years, I am particularly interested in the impact our food and weight have on fertility. These are factors in fertility we can actually control.

So, if this way of life is all we know, how do we begin to change? How do we learn to seek satisfaction instead of sickness?

Change is hard—especially when it comes to food. To make matters worse, so much of our food contains things like excessive salt and sugar that make them more addictive than nutritious. That said, regardless of how hard it might be, I encourage you to take a few baby steps this week to putting more real, locally grown, seasonal food in your diet and to start eating on smaller plates. See what happens for you. Even Google is using this trick to help their employees eat healthier. It’s worked for them, and it can work for you too.

When I came home from France there was a loaf of 100 percent whole wheat bread on the counter. It had been there for 23 days. It was just as fresh as the day I bought it. I have been eating this bread and feeding it to my children for years. Suddenly I was disgusted at the thought of what they must have put in this otherwise “healthy" food to give it a month-long shelf life and, more importantly, by the impact of eating this bread on a daily basis.