To think if we eat and adopted some of the lifestyle of the europeans we would not be the fattest country in Europe.

[WonderWendy1]

I went on a med cruise two weeks ago we stopped in Portugal, Spain, South Of France and Italy.

I think of myself as a fairly fit size 12 (14 in some things). I would say i'm on the slimmer side in the Uk. I go to these european cities and the women (and men) are much slimmer then me and dh.

I was then in Paris for a few nights a week ago and I can only say my gosh nearly everywomen I saw had the legs of Taylor Swift.

Aibu to think we need to be doing what the europeans do to avoid becoming the American country of Europe.

We were in Spain a few weeks ago at an attraction where there was what we assumed to be a holiday club outing. They were all wearing uniform tops... Sponsored by Haribo!

I noticed a fair few overweight Spaniards.

I did also notice, however, that similar to a pp, in the restaurant of an evening, the children of a Belgian family were opting for salad.

I agree that snacking and the over use of processed food, is a real problem in the UK.

However, googling health rates, Lung Cancer, Strokes etc, France isn't healthier than the UK, which should be the point of wanting to be thinner.

Who would want their DDs being pressured into being thinner and from my experience of France, it's very sexist, when there are no health benefits, because of other factors?

I wish that "we", took more pride in ourselves and our environment , no littering etc, in general, including good eating patterns and exercise.

Rather than the obsession with body size, alone.

The continental diet is quite healthy but there is an increased risk of heart disease and cancer as smoking is still on the increase and alcohol is also consumed in vast quantities.

at the risk of generalising, in UK there seems to be so much more snacking, eating in between main meals, all the supermarkets are full of sugary fatty "treats" in brightly coloured packaging. I see less of the prepackaged food on the continent

it's like anywhere, if you in the city centre you will see young slim people. Venture out a bit and they're older, a bit heavier.

I agree it you birds if only people focused more on the health benefits of the food they eat. Too much attention on body shape, when it is much more important to think about having a healthy heart, strong bones.

What I really don't get about the UK is the sheer SIZE of everything. In my experience at least, it's impossible, when out, to buy a small tea, a small coffee, a small wine. A Starbucks coffee (a lattte, or similar) has about 400 cals in it. That's the equivalent of a small meal!

A portion of chips from the chippie feeds 3 of us adequately. Wtf?

Same in restaurants-portions are HUGE (and made up of enormous amounts of chips). No wonder we're fat-we've lost sight of what a normal meal looks like...

Why have we got such a level of fat tolerance? I'm slim compared to most of my mates, but I'm not really slim at all (5'4, size 12). I've lost sight of what "slim" is!

For once, I'm all for Government intervention in this matter. We need to be told, in no uncertain terms, that we're too fat and eating too much. Maybe we'll take notice.

How can just coffee and milk have 400 calories in it? Unless you add cream on top and sugary syrups.

I was right - it doesn't.

France has higher diabetes and cancer rates than the UK - surely this is what matters.

So what if UK people are slightly larger? We are clearly healthier. The stats don't add up and your observations mean nothing on a scientific basis.

Eating a Mediterranean diet is way better for you - no arguments there but factually, French, Spanish and Portuguese people are statistically more likely to die of cancer or diabetes than we are.

The risks of being slightly over weight are blown way out of proportion in this country. People naturally come in lots of different shapes and sizes and many factors contribute to how you store fat.

Be healthy. Eat mostly natural food, keep treats as treats not every day occurrences, don't drink too much, don't smoke and move a lot. Size 6 or size 14, you'll be fine.

Haha... You should SEE the price of food here in Sweden!

A glass of wine in a restaurant or pub is minimum £8. There are never, ever cheap drinks.
Food, fruit, veg etc is 2-3x the price it is in the UK. If you go out to dinner you'll pay multiples of what it costs in the UK. There just aren't things like pound stretcher or cheap supermarkets.

If you want booze you buy it from one government controlled shop.

People eat differently here. You have a decent breakfast, then mid morning, most workplaces have 'fika' (coffee and cake.) lunch tends to be warm and time taken to eat it. People (and kids) tend not to snack or eat rubbish.

In the summer everyone is outdoors because after a pitch black winter you have to go outside. people cycle to work all year round.

Paris is an anomaly by the way - go out to the countryside and you'll see plenty of larger French people.

We are so used to image being so important in this country we would be likely to not bat an eyelid at a slim stylish woman smoking but comment on an overweight person exercising. It's odd really.

Yes to Paris being an anomaly.

Also, I think if we're being shallow about appearances, it's worth noting that women seem to age a lot better here. All that sun and fags cannot be good for your skin!

soup ok I stand corrected but it IS possible to buy a coffee for 299 cals. Add in some sugar and some syrupy stuff and I bet you're close to 400 cals then.

The point I'm making is that it's easy-too easy-to underestimate the calories in stuff that you consume in addition to food.

Even my little home-made coffee with milk and one spoon of sugar has 50 cals in (according to Mfp). Six cups and you've added 300 cals to your daily calorie intake.

Of course there are obese people in France because there isn't a 0% obesity level. That doesn't mean that overall, the levels of obesity aren't significantly lower.

There are regions in the south which are famous for rugby, and where food is famous for being much fattier and enormous portions, but that's a very small portion of the country.

Overall, amongst everyone I know and have met through friends out here over the last however many years, no-one has been obese. People are obviously different shapes and sizes, some are bigger than others, but none are obese or significantly overweight.

The comments about all the bakeries is funny - yes, there are a lot of bakeries here, but people go there mainly for bread. Whilst a British person might see all the lovely cannelés and think "oh they look nice, I'll buy a box of them" and then eat them throughout the day/morning, over here, a person would just buy one single cannelé and would eat it as their breakfast - not an additional snack.

Generally I think people have a much healthier attitude to food here, and consider their weight an important part of their general health. Yes, there are smokers, but most younger smokers (20's and 30's) really only smoke socially or when drinking. It's really not that much.

I think it is a combination of portion size and the amount of snacking we do here.
Everywhere you look there is a large, supersize, mega version of the original product. We are encouraged to upscale when eating at fast food outlets always asked if we want to go large for only 30p more etc. In fact in some cases it is cheaper to have more than less.
We snack far too much as well thinking that our children need to eat constantly. I work in a school and was astounded at what some children are sent with as a snack for breaktimes. Several year 1 children had a sandwich, crisps, yogurt type thing, a babybel, a chocolate biscuit and perhaps an apple or banana. This was for breaktimes these children were having a hot school meal at midday so why the need for all that. I send less for my own children for the day and they have packed lunches.
Just the other day someone was on another thread asking what snacks she could give her 6 month old baby I mean FFS, we are conditioned to stuff our faces all day long.
I also find reading on here and other sites, talking to friends etc that people have a poor understanding of what a portion of fruit or veg is. A lot of people think if they have side salad they are getting 3-4 portions, that if they put a stick of celery a couple of carrots and an onion in a cottage pie then they are having another 3 portions. In reality the salad would be max of 2 portions and the cottage pie lucky if it was even 1. A portion is approx 80g for an adult a lot of people would be surprised at that.
I think there is a problem everywhere with overeating etc not just in the UK. It is a combination of many different lifestyle factors that contribute to the problem.

This is the well documented (by me) 'Hawaii effect' When on holiday in sunny climes everyone, everyone, is beautiful, and fit, and healthy. Back in grey old work mode, not so much.

WorraLiberty
I agree that obesity for the main part, boils down to eating too much food and not exercising enough.

I know some people like to blame the food industry/poverty/too many carbs etc

But imo (and that's based on my experience of many, many overweight people whose eating habits/exercise habits I'm privy to), they just eat too much, too often and don't burn enough off.

That's a bit simplistic. On holiday in the US a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was a miracle that everybody wasn't overweight (the sheer prevalence and variety of fast food eateries; the enormity of the supermarkets and junk/processed food on offer; almost all adverts on tv junk food related). It would be hard to ignore the constant messages and visual reminders of all the (inexpensive) rubbish you can eat - you begin to think it's ok/the norm to eat like that most of the time. That said, the vast majority of people in New York were slim (more healthy food options; food more expensive; getting around involves a lot of movement; lots of people exercising). In summary, I think the environment you live in and cultural norms can make a big difference to how hard or easy it is to have a healthy lifestyle.

I live in Spain. There is a big divide here between cities and villages, rich and poor and young and old

Spanish people love eating. They eat big meals 3 times a day and 2 smaller meals in between. People tend to put weight on in their mid 30s because they eat as they did when they were younger but cant get away with it anymore. Middle class teenagers and 20-somethings are all thin. Well, nearly all, that has changed a bit recently..

Child obesity is a problem with the lower classes and in the villages, especially in the South where the grandmas are obsessive about making sure their grandchildren are always eating because they remember their own siblings dying of consumption. But even these kids eat well at mealstimes, good home cooked food, but they also will snack on rubbish in between

You can't real buy prepared food at the supermarkets here, you have to cook from scratch. In the UK, almost everything in the supermarkets has been prepared and processed for you (and filled with sugars and palm oil)

I am Spanish and I don't think it is so easy to make general statements by country as it has been pointed out here. Life expectancy is pretty similar in Spain and UK (82 and 81 respectively) despite a clear difference in economic power and resources.

One thing that has always bothered me about the UK and US eating culture is the 'children menu' you find in most restaurants (unless they are the kind where kids are not expected). Have never seen this in Spain nor in France, unless you eat in a McDonalds or similar.

You would expect the children menu option to be healthier: no salt, no processed food, etc. Instead you get chicken nuggets, burger, pasta and pizza as the standard offer. I guess this is quite new and new generations of children are growing with this mentality re range of foods you expect children to eat. It can't be good.

Agree with mijas. I would add that people from poor villages eat lots of good food they grow themselves. Where I come from now, you spend the full summer getting bored of eating courgettes, pepper, tomatoes, melon and water melon. However, they also eat a ridiculous amount of bread, lots of pork and very little fish (in some villages away from the coast there are no fishmonger whatsoever).
However, the expression 'cook from scratch' does not exist in French or Spanish. It says it all really

The thing I really noticed is the absence of dairy! I can imagine our high dairy fat chocolate and high dairy diet in general wouldn't agree with them at all.
Their main dishes didn't strike me as being what we would think of as particularly healthy- lots of pork and dark poultry and they aren't afraid of a bit of deep frying... Fresh veg wasn't massively abundant either but portions were much smaller, everything always served with a bowl of rice and some pickles and miso soup. Butter, milk and cheese were almost entirely absent... Though this was about 7 years ago though and I've read they're drinking a lot more lattes now.

Fuzzy, the Dutch are slim and eat a LOT of dairy. The Norwegians do as well.
So I don't think Dairy is to blame for we Brits getting fatter.
A lot of the cheap supermarket ice cream we eat is very often made from vegetable oil, (it's not ice cream as such) so is not really dairy.
I bet the main brands of chocolate don't contain much dairy either.

So, Chocolate and ice cream (unless high quallity) will contain a high percentage of vegetable fat and tons of sugar. So our high consumption of icecream and chocolate is bad for us.
But, if we were to include good quality cheeses, butter and fatty meats in our diets, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

I don't think dairy is a problem... I think dairy is an important part of my diet and I tend to prefer to have smaller amounts of the full fat stuff. I just happened to notice that the Japanese don't consume much at all... I can see why it may not agree with them.

Incidentally I went on holiday to Iceland in February and came back with a duty-free cool bag full of butter and skyr because the quality of their dairy is so much better. Give me good quality butter over low fat marge any day!

Whenever I go to the mediterranean I notice cheap tasty fruit and veg. EVERYWHERE (we usually get a rental flat and cook). This is not in upscale barcelona, but usually some small town somewhere.

When i leave London (and frankly it's true of London as well, but it's worse outside London), I see the iconic english breakfast in all its fatty sausage and orange sweet bean glory. just a token fried tomato to let you know there are fresh veggies out there, just not on your plate.

You even see a big difference between London and Paris markets. Add to this there seems to be a real urban/non urban divide in Britain.

maybe we should all smoke Gitanes and starve ourselves to truss ourselves up in horrible 'lingerie'?