Why Don't The French Get As Fat As Americans, Considering All The Baguettes, Wine, Cheese, Pate And Pastries They Eat?

February 25, 2008

Why Don't The French Get As Fat As Americans, Considering All The Baguettes, Wine, Cheese, Pate And Pastries They Eat?http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/97639.php

Because they use internal cues -- such as no longer feeling hungry --

to stop eating, reports a new Cornell study. Americans, on the other

hand, tend to use external cues -- such as whether their plate is

clean, they have run out of their beverage or the TV show they're

watching is over.

" Furthermore, we have found that the heavier a person is --

French or American -- the more they rely on external cues to tell them

to stop eating and the less they rely on whether they felt full, " said

senior author Wansink, the S. Dyson Professor of Marketing

and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab in the Department of

Applied Economics and Management, now on leave to serve as executive

director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition

Policy and Promotion until January 2009.

The new study, an analysis of questionnaires from 133

Parisians and 145 Chicagoans about how they decide when to stop eating,

is being published in the journal Obesity and is being presented this later month at an the Winter Marketing Educators conference.

" Over-relying on external cues to stop eating a meal may prove useful

in offering a partial explanation of why body mass index [a calculation

based on the relationship of weight to height] varies across people and

potentially across cultures, " said co-author Collin Payne, a Cornell

postdoctoral researcher. He stressed that further studies should

following up with smoking behavior and socio-economic differences as

well. " Relying on internal cues for meal cessation, rather than on

external cues, may improve eating patterns in the long term.

----------------------------Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.----------------------------

Wansink, author of " Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We

Think, " also conducted the study with Pierre Chandon, a marketing

professor at INSEAD, an international business school in France.

Source: Cuellar

Cornell Food & Brand Lab

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