PARIS HEALTH DISPATCH 1: Why aren't 40% of Euros prediabetic?
Explaining subtle differences between Euro and USA diets
The vernacular argument is obesity is lower in Europe because of a handful of factors. Simple concepts—less food, walking more, scant industrial chemistry in food—that are too obvious to form the basis of a narrative argument. But on a granular level some of these things… hold up less. A recent NYMag gotcha piece (here) discounts some of these factors. It’s thorough, and highlights important specifics. The reporting is true—glyphosate’s alive and well in Europe, and has been re-upped in France (where I’m at now) for eight years (in an EU vote; France abstained). One passage in the story though jumped out at me:
Then there’s RFK Jr.’s claim that Americans have “10,000 ingredients in our food,” whereas Europeans “only have 400,” which, like many things that come out of his mouth, is clearly wrong. The 2011 report he appears to have pulled the 10,000 from includes “indirect food additives” such as chemicals used in food packaging. And though the E.U. database of approved food additives has 412 items, it has a separate list of more than 2,500 approved food flavorings. While Europeans do tend to eat fewer ultraprocessed foods than Americans on average, the idea that those foods don’t exist there is also a fantasy.
I’m not sure. This is writerly subterfuge here. Within the bounds, but fitting the true reporting into a narrative. It’s true, Europe is not free of additives, and it is true that there are 2,500 flavorings. But there are still fewer additives in Europe (under 400) than in America—that 10,000 number, reported by the Pew Charitable Trust a decade ago, isn’t entirely BS. It should also be free in people’s minds from RFK Jr., and so should anything about health and diet. These foods existed long before he (or anyone else) was in the public eye.
It’s not a bad article, it’s just hidebound. The argument outside the story is legislative onus in EU is on additive producers to prove that these additives are safe. Maybe, maybe not. But the reality is there are fewer. Not night and day, like stories like these require, but there’s a difference. It isn’t a binary difference, just a big one. Whatever, god bless the working press; it’s also very hard to report capably on something that’s completely broken. As always, the real world is more context-driven than a magazine story.
So why is it better in Euro?
It is true that it’s not night and day between America and Europe. Legislation in Europe isn’t airtight or perfect. Prob. many of the things that make Americans feel better eating on the continent don’t have to do with food. One is that you’re in Europe and you feel good. You’re not home or at the office working. You’re on vacation, or if you are working (like me brother), you’re somewhere different, and you’re eating with people you love. And if you’re eating alone, well, you’re eating something different at least. In a storied, stimulating place. It’s literally a trip and your brain and body are overloaded, or stimulated, with sensations of somewhere new.
That’s part of it. But like most things in health, there’s also another ambient cloud of interrelating factors that make up… a feeling that is hard to distill in words. It’s not one meal, one chemical, one behavior that can be explained, but rather the difference is ease and structure. The difference is this. Different structure.
What I mean: There are actually many healthy (whatever that means) people in America—health can be accessed here. It’s not impossible in America. (That would be crazy. It would be crazy!) It is just… well, incumbent on the individual. You must either be lucky* or do all the work. Whereas there are more “healthy” people in Europe*. Lots more? It’s structural… it’s something here. You have to be thick to think that there isn’t a structural difference. It’s evident to people… but structure is hard to display in a news story. So I’ll do my best here to explain below, through my experience living here off and on for three years, how it shows up.
*Parents more than genetics
*Not going to get into a big thing here but let’s just say on a macro level the French population is not 40% prediabetic, like the U.S. (about 10% in Fr/Euro according to studies and WHO data). That’s a difference—and it’s also not a fat shaming thing (this newsletter doesn’t care about these things).
Differences in structure
Here are the main obvious startling macro differences, social, legal:
Portions in Europe are smaller. In restaurants and in grocery stores, everywhere. People eat fewer calories, there is less food. You can’t buy a lb. of roast beef at the store except at the butcher. They sell them by 100g. , you can’t buy snacks every 2 feet. (You can get little coffees though.) Only a few restaurants serve the pretty big steaks, if you just get the main course at a restaurant you’ll be hungry afterwards, and so on, forever.
It’s so pervasive you just kind of stay a bit hungry, and then you get used to eating less. (No one wants to be crabby on vacation.) Do we eat too much food in America? Not for me to say. But the delta between portion sizes there and here, incredibly roughly and when combined with other factors (below), leads to a caloric deficit over time. This is so patently obvious and true that it’s too simple to base a news article around it. There also isn’t a theory—it’s observational. But come on. Anyways these very, very boring truths make up 95% of like health, so it is true. Just because it’s beyond obvious and is not news doesn’t mean it’s not a massive factor.
People walk more. Cities are built for walking, yes, but so is New York. So rather it’s not just walking… there’s a pressure here. Socializing, life has a walking component. Someone who’s 40 minutes away by foot will walk. People don’t take cars as much here and they kind of judge their use. Social pressure isn’t double blind, of course, and such forces won’t take you from zero to 100, but a norm in the air is kind of real. If everyone walks, you’ll walk. Patently obvious, not narratively novel… but steps add up.
Single ingredients. A lot more food here isn’t a chemistry project than is. At restaurants, at grocery stores… Is most stuff single ingredient here? Not sure. Are they free of veg. oils? No, not really. But a bigger plurality of food here is “healthier” than in America. Bakeries (obvious) aren’t shitholes, restaurants aren’t Wild West.
and, obviously, grocery stores are different. There’s more good stuff than bad stuff at the g. stores here. More produce, refrigerated meats/fishes/cheeses, eggs, water… fewer boxed foods. In terms of VARIETY and footage. This is a rough heuristic, and not exactly double-blind—but it’s good enough for an adult to form ideas on*. This said, the restaurants here probably skew more to vegetable oils than many people think. It’s not like the chick who eats the steak and whispers is in charge of nutrition. But better means better not perfect.
*I wouldn’t use this observational non-math, say, to decide whether you want to do peptides. But it works for groceries A vs. groceries B.
Low effort
The above quality observations are of course up for debate scientifically. The food in Europe though feels better (I’m sure it is, it’s insane to think it isn’t), even with some emulsifiers and twisted ingredients. But those are catalysts, the cause to me is the lack of effort required. It’s not impossible in America to be healthy (it is not impossible), but it requires work, a bunch of decisions a day. (For a while anyways.) It’s not automatic—you really have to do it all yourself. An example of this: an American grocery store full of mostly “edge of the store” foods—produce, meat, eggs, dairy, etc—i.e. one that resembles an European grocery store, is a gourmet grocery store. It’s a rich people store. It’s expensive and aspirational. It’s not everywhere. It has a philosophy. While in France (Paris) literally every shithole grocery has like, mostly really good stuff. Casino, Carrefour City… Monoprix… these aren’t Union Market. These aren’t Citarella. These aren’t Happier Grocery. They aren’t aspirational. They aren’t fancy, they don’t have a program. They are regular, Gristedes-level stores that are sometimes beat to shit. The one I go to has had the same broken window since 2022. And it smokes any organic/healthy store that’s in New York. By far. California, too, while we’re at it. They’re cheaper and better. It’s night and day. It’s wild.
That’s the structural thing. The nutrition system’s market and legislative outputs make it so that health in Europe is low effort. It’s cheap. It’s easy. Because laws aren’t insane in Europe (compared to America’s Wild West), there are some guidelines for food—maybe the market, maybe the laws—and so protections exist for the consumer. Which means it’s not mostly desk jockeys or people with good jobs and free time or people who hire people to solve their health for them, like it is in America—people with the means to obfuscate the law.
Speaking very roughly, health isn’t a checklist, a full-time job, something that you have to tweak out about in Europe. One doesn’t need to be strenuous at the individual level about it to maintain competent health. One doesn’t need to read ingredients with a magnifying glass, have a super-limited palette, weigh one’s food, know what a myotoxin is, to be… decent. (Not Olympian—not beyond the pale healthy—but decent… pretty good.) People in Europe are prediabetic, sure, but not half the population. There are industrial foods here, glyphosate, restaurants use seed oils. But speaking generally, it’s taken care of. It’s not work.
Satiety
Still, to me there’s still a logical gulf in all of the above there. That explains some of the ‘90s French paradox debate: calories, emulsifiers, less round-up… but what about what positive qualities? I.e. the food itself. Nutrition isn’t about legislation. What I mean is this: there’s a difference in kind, not degree, between Europe and America. Euros in Europe don’t live on vacation. They’re not at the pool all day, they don’t all just walk and not work. The pounds—or the, roughly, delta in prediabetes rates—aren’t coming off because people in France are living demonstrably different or eating like a bird. They work here, they go to work.
Calories?
In fact it might not even be a difference in calories. The story goes, by the same people who say Europe is better, that here they eat less. But the French eat 800 cals. of white flour a day… and data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which, among other things, tracks macro level consumption patterns in states, showed that the country’s caloric numbers in the recent era, and 55 years ago are similar:
It’s maybe not caloric reduction… it’s kind of more that people in France have Union Markets or whatever on every corner for cheap. There’s something else here. Something about the food itself, something outright different from the NY Mag thing and even the very recent post-bodybuilding explanations people give of protein being… the most important thing. Really it’s satiety, I’d say, and not feeling heavy.
Satiety is rarely discussed. Food in France is, roughly, built around satiety (if you can call it built) and against it. It plays with it. Not in a strict calories in/out sense, or with “nutrients first,” or some cart before the horse narrative concept of vitamins over dinner. The food isn’t planned around satiety, it just kind of is. So what foods? Well, in a second. The elephant in the room is this. Things work here. Roughly. Roughly—but they do. A much less alarming rate of prediabetes. Superficial markers (thinness, decent hair) if that matters to you. This is a structural thing. The structure of food here has that built-in ease, roughly, and through this it promotes satiety. It’s a different way of thinking about food compared to the nutrient-first, caloric model that mainstream press has begun to discover, and which many people follow. But it’s how it is here. Nutrient-dense foods, filling, fats… in a ratio that beats out the obsessive caloric matrix. It’s more than just protein. and there’s a clear way to describe how it works. And what they do in France carries over, without too much effort, in America, if it’s understood. That’s explained in full after the jump.
