The French Paradox
The French Paradox was first noted by Irish physician Samuel Black in 1819, but wasn’t coined the term “the French paradox” until 1992 by Dr. Serge Renaud, a scientist from Bordeaux University in France. Bordeaux is a region of France where the grapes are grown for some of the finest red wines in the world.
Weightloss experts have talked a lot about the “French paradox.” The French dine on some of the richest foods in the world, yet the population as a whole is slim. The French paradox also explains why the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet rich in saturated fats. In 2008 it was found that high doses of resveratrol (a constituent of red wine) mimicked some of the benefits of caloric restriction (including reduced effects of aging) in a mice study.
According to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) data the average French person consumed 108 grams per day of fat from animal sources in 2002 while the average American consumed only 72. The French eat four times as much butter, 60 percent more cheese and nearly three times as much pork. The French consume only slightly more total fat (171 g/d vs 157 g/d), but they consume much more saturated fat because Americans consume a much larger proportion of fat in the form of vegetable oil, with most of that being soybean oil. However, according to the British Heart Foundation in 1999 death rates from coronary heart disease among males aged 35–74 years was 115 per 100,000 people in the US but only 83 per 100,000 in France.
