Fitness Mantra del.icio.us pageWelcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Ah the French! How we envy their rich foods, fine cheeses, aromatic wines, delectable chocolates and … slim waists? Wait, how is that possible? There must be some mistake! Aren’t rich foods and cheeses and chocolates the very antithesis of a slim waist? Well, not really, as this article points out!

The crucial component of eating - knowing when to stop - is a complex system of several cues a person gets. Some are internal (feeling of fullness, a nausea from overeating, tastelessness after awhile and so on. Others are external: The game is still on! Others are still eating! … etc. And as is by now pretty obvious to the discerning reader, it’s the internal cues that we must train ourselves to react to. It’s also one of the most difficult things to do and something that the French are, apparently, pretty adept at: they simply know when to stop eating!

In a Cornell Food Lab Study, both Parisians and Chicagoans were asked the simple question “How do you know when you are through eating dinner?” The different answers speak for themselves:

The Parisians said they knew they were through when they no longer felt hungry or when the food no longer tasted good to them. Their answers suggested that they’re influenced by internal cues — whether they liked the taste of the food or whether they wanted to leave room for a later dessert — to tell them dinner’s over.
In Chicago, it was a different ball game. The 145 Americans relied on external cues of satiety. They said they knew they were through eating when they cleaned their plate, when everyone else at the table was finished or when the TV show they were watching was over. [MSNBC]

Some of this difference has to do genetics and body weight composition (the heavier folks tended to rely on external cues). But a lot of it has to do with culture and the relationship a group of people have with their food. While we tend to rush around and keep food as an “on the go” commodity and tend to combine the eating of our “fast” foods with other activities, it might benefit us all to take a moment and admire how the French take time out of their day to sit, relax, enjoy and really eat their food.

Therein, in all probability, lies the secret to rich food that still results in healthy bodies.

Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

  1. Stop when full? You must be French: In deciding when it’s time to push away from the table, it seems that the French may be responding to different eating signals than Americans.
  2. Alcohol ‘quickly’ cuts heart risk: New moderate drinkers were 38% less likely to develop heart disease than those who stayed tee-total, a four-year study involving 7,500 people found.
  3. Working out? Don’t sweat how much you perspire: “You don’t have to sweat to get a good workout, and exercising in higher temperatures and humidity can be dangerous,”
  4. Are fears of a fat planet overblown?: “The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated,” said Dr. Vincent Marks, emeritus professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey.
  5. Inside Info About Eating Out: Letting a restaurant do the cooking for you may be quick, easy and tasty, but it can also mean relinquishing control over what you eat — and even how much.
  6. Device helps fat kids cut TV time: A monitoring device that cut TV and computer time in half helped young, overweight children eat less and lose weight
  7. Breakfast keeps teens lean: Teenagers who regularly eat breakfast tend to weigh less, exercise more and eat a more healthful diet than their breakfast-skipping peers

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Have a great weekend!

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