Andouillette and the French Paradox

I spent some time, a couple of weeks ago visiting relatives and friends in Lyon. And on Sunday a whole lot of us were invited to lunch. The hostess had been careful to ask if there was any strong objection to "andouillettes". Oh yes, there was.

Andouillettes are not for beginners, but I thought being a good Lyonnaise, I should not raise my hand up and see if I could still hack smelly sausages made of intestine stuffed with tripes and mustard.

As I was tucking in my andouillettes, I reflected on the French paradox: French people have a lower incidence of coronary disease and are noticeably slimmer than people in Anglo-Saxons counties.
Here I was with 2 smallish portions of food highly saturated in fat but also food which had been picked carefully, in fact our hostess had travelled over 30 kms to buy the best andouillettes. Anyway I was washing the lot away with really good red wine, taking a lot of pleasure in recapturing savours that I had long forgotten.
So is the secret of staying slim to eat smaller portion size of high quality food and savour your food? that would be too simple, there must be much more to it than that, but that gave me food for thought.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

When I was studying French, part of my course included the culture and I found the same thing to be true - they have lower incidence of heart disease, diabetes and they are slimmer. I think the combination of wine in their diet and real fat vs mock fat, and smaller portions of food really makes a difference. The French strike me as people who love fresh, real food and not the boxed, highly processed foods that the Anglo-Saxons like.

Anonymous said...

awesome blog, do you have twitter or facebook? i will bookmark this page thanks. lina holzbauer

Solange Berchemin of Pebble Soup said...

Do, do, do, click on followers' button, if you like this blog, so that I don't look like Billy no mate, here is my twitter http://twitter.com/#!/solangeweb sorry I don't do Facebook.

happy new year Lina

si

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