In the new book, French Women Don’t Get Fat, you’ll find many nuggets of useful information. Or you can just photo copy the back 8 pages, summing up the entire diatribe.
   I wanted to like this book, I did. I did. But…outside of the fact that Mireille Guiliano is right about most things…I can’t recommend this book. Something about its light smugness(even handicapping that she is French) reads like the author is patting you on the head like a red, white, and blue oompa loompa for 150 pages.
   And, here’s the big butt if you will, she’s wrong. France today is not her glorified flashback, not in the cities anyway. Everywhere around the world the cancer of fast food is spreading. Chubby faces on the Champs Elysees, Harajuku Square, and the Piazza Fiore. We have globalized obesity, god bless the USA. And according to many studies(I googled "french overweight"), twice as many French are overweight today than just ten years ago.
   And her dismissive, head patting of the American obsession with fad diets? And her suggestion of eating nothing but leek broth for 48 hours is different how?
   She also fails to mention ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING that many European women rely upon for their most popular diet aid: cigarettes. Hello! Many Euros are lighting up before their ass hits the seat. To not even address this topic renders her pedantic memoir moot.
   Here is the main reason this book bugs me, though. She doesn’t live in our reality. It smacks a little too much like Marie Antoinette: i.e. "let them eat cake." This woman grew up in the French country side, very few-if any-Farmer’s markets in America can rival those in France. And now she lives in New York City, not exactly the everyday reality in which most American slog. I agree with her "eat seasonally" approach. And I’m sad at the reality in which most Americans live, and their poor relationship with food. But I also grew up with a mom that worked her ass off all day just to keep a roof over our heads. Sometimes McDonald’s was the fastest, cheapest solution.
   I work in a specialty food store, in a Farmer’s market. I’m one of the few people who could live/eat, easily, the way this book suggests, and I still say it’s difficult.
   Americans need to stop looking at food as something they are too busy to enjoy properly. Americans need to break the warehouse shopping habit. Americans are way too desensitized to sugar thanks to fast food. Americans have a serious problem with portion control and guilt.
   But this book is not an answer.