Low-fat low-sugar low-flavour

One of the things the gormless Anglo-Saxon world just won't learn is that if one wants to lose weight, low-fat, low-sugar, low-flavour foods are not the way to go.  They have been prevalent in Anglo-Saxon nations for a long time and have not made much of a dent, if any, in the obesity rate.  There is a saying about insanity being when one does the same thing over and over again and expects different results!

A French woman knows that if one wants to be impossibly perfect and thin like us, it is no good going for low-fat variants: - what is necessary is to have an impossibly dainty appetite like us.  A French woman prefers dainty portions of the real thing: - the flavour gives her extremely refined taste buds a sensation of pure pleasure that goes a long way to making her feel full (I couldn't find a Wikimedia Commons picture showing the sensation I wanted), so there is no picture between here and the next paragraph.

I just adore real yoghurt: - there was once an occasion on my travels to the USA when I was at the breakfast buffet and I picked up a yoghurt without thinking, but what I didn't know was that it was phoney low-fat yoghurt!  I was so disgusted by the taste that I had to rush to the toilet, where I nearly threw up!  I had to wash my mouth out, but needed to go back to the table to do this, as I don't like water that is not pure.  Tap water will not do even for washing out my mouth!  Real yoghurt is one of life's great pleasures.

There is an article on Wikipedia about something called the French paradox, which concerns how French people eat a large amount of saturated fats than many other nations, but still have a very low heart disease rate.  A French woman knows that real saturated fats are much less bad than severely unnatural trans fats that are found in many foods today.

A French woman will also not do artificial sweeteners, such as sucralose, glucose syrup etc.  A French woman treats sweet foods as being occasional treats and knows that artificial sweeteners are no good, as they prolong one's taste for sweet foods.  Also, even though many of them are more powerful per gram than sugar, they often load the person eating them up with calories, but without making them full.  A French woman much prefers a dessert that is only as sweet as it needs to be to cleanse her palate of the previous course: - this might be sprinkled with a small amount of sugar only.  Also, a French woman much prefers to eat natural foods.  What does this mean when it comes to sugar?  It means that she much prefers muscovado sugar, knowing that this is closer to how nature intended it (the word "refined" does not always have good connotations to a French woman) and that unrefined sugar preserved more of the nutrients such as mineral salts, phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron etc.  The picture below shows the difference: - the one on the right is brown sugar and the one on the left is muscovado sugar.

In summary, a French woman much prefers dainty quantities of the real thing, with its rich flavours, rather than large quantities of flavourless food.  As silly Americans would say, I'm like helloooooooooo, earth to America!  Low-fat low-sugar low-flavour foods do not help!

Provence

As I have more or less said in earlier postings, I grew up in Marseille, the largest city in Provence.  As a whole, France (with its impossibly thin women) is impossibly perfect, but superlatives let me down when it comes to describing my home region of Provence: - it is not just impossibly thin women that make Provence just divine.

I can't stand being away from Provence, so I am very pleased that it is possible to cover the approximately 750km or so between Paris and Marseille in only 3h05m by the train.  Paris is the fashion capital of the world, but I think it would be absolutely divine if the capital relocated itself to Marseille!  I would rarely need to leave the city to conduct my business activities, though I do think the train journey is just fabulous!  The Eurostar services also make transportation a little easier when I regrettably find the need to go to London on business.

France's Mediterranean coast is pretty much the only area of France where olives can be grown.  Olive trees are a very important plant to a French woman for various reasons.

We just adore using olive oil in our cuisine: - Jeanne Calment of Arles, a town within the boundaries of Provence, set the record for the confirmed oldest person (though a Bolivian man is vying for her title).  She was 122 years old when she died and used olive oil with all her food, as well as using it as a moisturiser.

The moisturiser part brings me onto another thing I just adore about Marseille: - Savon de Marseille, which is made using olive oil.  When buying Savon de Marseille, one must be careful, as it is often mislabelled.  The green variety is made using olive oil (as mandated by Louis XIX in the Edict of Colbert), whereas the white variety is made using a mixture of copra oil and palm oil!  Yeek!  Palm oil is a disgusting ingredient that is used by the food industry as a substitute for real fats that I will not touch!  Savon de Marseille should also be made from sea water from the Mediterranean Sea: - the water of any other body of water simply will not do!

When I am in the UK on business and I struggle to cope with the lack of sophistication, I tend to head for branches of a chainstore called L'Occitane en Provence, which sells various beauty products of Provençal provenance and has its headquarters in the town of Manosque, Provence (Olivier Baussan wanted to promulgate the Provençale lifestyle).  When I am at home in Marseille, I tend to buy such things from artesanal producers, but L'Occitane en Provence is the next best thing if this option is not practical.

Let us not forget the dietary things one can do with olive oil: - after all, if you are filling your body with filth, some absolutely divine olive oil used as moisturiser is of no avail.  A French woman just adores good wine and there are many useful things that come from the process: - I cannot stand unnatural and artificial dressings that one buys in a supermarket that are laden with E-numbers.  A French woman knows that it is very easy to make proper dressings using olive oil and wine vinegar (1 part vinegar to 3-4 parts olive oil or whatever ratio you prefer).  Olive oil made in Provence is great as a salad dressing all by itself: - drizzled on freshly-picked and sliced tomatoes from Provence, it tastes divine!

Note that both ingredients need to come from Provence for the sensation of pure pleasure!  They taste a world better than poisonous tomatoes covered in pesticides imported from the Canary Islands in the depths of winter!  As the saying goes, you are what you eat: - a French woman's dislike of unnatural food helps explain her unrivalled perfection.  I hope that Paris' fashion industry will move to Marseille, as I couldn't stand living anywhere but Provence.

Petits Fours

As I have made clear on a number of occasions in previous posts, one of the things that is impossibly perfect about us French women is our figures.  We have impossibly perfect figures on account of how little we eat, but we eat exceptionally dainty portions of very delicious food.

Another way of doing food correctly that is quintessentially French is petits fours (there are somewhat similar delicacies in Austria called Punschkrapfen, but this is the only vaguely similar thing in Austria and they don't come close to the perfection of petits fours).  "Petits fours" translates as "small ovens".

French women, on account of being much better than American and British women in pretty much everything they do, like to have minuscule portions of a larger number of different food types.  Some exceptionally dainty petits fours allow us to do this.

I can't stand the way Americans don't know how to do desserts properly.  What they do is shove a huge piece of cake onto a huge plate with some disgusting sauce (say chocolate) with no thought for presentation.  The end result tends to be overly sweet: - I feel so sophisticated on account of finding myself disliking overly sweet desserts.

Bumpkins like desserts to be as sweet as possible, whereas a French woman knows that an ideal dessert is only as sweet as it needs to be to cleanse one's palate of the previous course.  A French woman is also much more sophisticated than her counterparts in the USA and UK because she prefers her desserts to be slightly tart, rather than overly sweet.

However, super-sweet foods can still be pleasurable to sophisticated French women.  In order for a French woman to find them pleasurable, they need to be in the form of elegantly-crafted exceptionally dainty petits fours.  When living in the UK, there is a product made by a company called Mr. Kipling somewhat similar in size (though still large by the standards of a French woman) called French Fancies (a.k.a. Fondant Fancies when made by other people): - disgusting stuff!  The "buttercream" is actually made with vegetable oil and although the chocolate variety has some chocolate included, the strawberry and lemon flavours do not use these ingredients and use artificial flavours instead.  Also, the cakes are 30% sugar: - as mentioned, sophisticated people don't like overly sweet foods.  I remember one occasion in the UK where I found myself high-and-dry in terms of food options and I bought this disgusting cake, thinking it was going to be palatable: - I spat it out in disgust as a natural reflex and unfortunately made quite a spectacle of myself.  I thought I was going to need an ambulance, lol ("mdr" in French)!

Though a French woman despises the taste of overly sweet full-size desserts, she will sometimes have petits fours at the end of several courses, say a starter, a main course, a cheese course etc.  A French woman loathes cupcakes, but, as a very occasional indulgence, might have a micro-sized cupcake as a petit four, though she will normally prefer desserts of French origin, e.g. mille feuille, knowing that French cuisine is far more sophisticated.  One thing we French women are good at that helps make us effortlessly perfect is being able to treat foods as treats if they are meant to be treated that way: - we don't binge on a huge chocolate dessert slathered in chocolate sauce every single mealtime like big, fat, ugly and disgusting American women do.  Vive la France!

Unsophisticated temperatures

One thing I find British people aren't so bad at (though still not as good as the French), but the Americans are really stupid at is knowing what temperatures are optimum for food and drink.

In the film Notting Hill, Jeff King (played by Alec Baldwin) cracks a joke about how British people supposedly have lower tastes than Americans in not having the same preference for ice-cold beverages.  This is one of the few things British people have the foggiest idea about.  A French woman knows that unless a dish is cooked or it is a hot beverage, food and drink should be served at room temperature.  A French woman knows that temperate is best in the overwhelming majority of cases.  I'm not sure how to represent room temperature or "temperate-ness", so I have attached a photo of the Temperate House at Kew Gardens in London.

Two examples for which a French woman knows that temperate is best are water and cheese.

As mentioned in a previous post, a French woman likes to sip mineral water, given that she is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between different types.  Cold water just numbs the tongue and makes it harder to gain the sensation of pure pleasure that comes from pure and sophisticated mineral water.

A French woman knows her dainty appetite very well and so what she does is she anticipates how much cheese she will want, cuts it off and leaves it to reach room temperature for at least an hour.  This is assuming she is doing something beneath her dignity and not buying food on a daily basis (i.e. in bulk), though occasionally, blocks of cheese are too large for one day: - a Frenchwoman is close to the land and so knows how much effort it takes to produce quality food, meaning that she is unwilling to waste food if it can be avoided.  On the other hand, if she is behaving in a matter befitting of a sophisticated French woman, she will only buy from the market the quantities of cheese she needs for that day.

So there you have it.  In her sophistication, a French woman likes things to be just-so: - not too hot, not too cold.  When it comes to food and drink, these extremes are befitting off less sophisticated peoples.

An almost impossibly perfect country

Not so long ago, I went on a business trip to the Land of the Rising Sun to have some key discussions regarding setting up a Japanese version of my fashion magazine.  Why is it that I am thinking of doing it in Japan?  Simple: - Japanese women are the race that come closest to French women to being perfect (minus the word "effortlessly": - we will see why).

Japanese women famously have the highest life expectancy in the world of any major nation (by which I mean that the nation is not a microstate and therefore prone to extreme statistics) at 85.72 years according to the CIA's 2012 data.  However, according to the same data, women in metropolitan France are snapping at their heels with 84.80 years.  Now, one thing I want to make clear is that nobody comes close to French women in terms of being effortlessly perfect, but I thought I would write a bit about Japan, given that it is the country that comes closest, though the truth be told, it is still a long way away.

The first thing that is great about Japan is that the people there are effortlessly thin, just like in France.  A French women knows that being overweight to the extent of looking like one spends all day every day camped outside a McDonalds drive-by is the best thing one can do to make oneself look unsophisticated.  How do Japanese women do it?  Simple: - the same way as us French do it.  Japanese women have extremely dainty appetites and are close contenders in terms of how little they can eat and still feel full up.

One of the Americans present on my business trip was 'avin' the 'ump (a curious phrase my mother taught me) with a local contact of mine taking dainty nibbles from an ever-so-dainty bowl of ramen and then saying afterwards with a smug voice, "I'm foooll up!"  I desperately wanted my local Japanese contact to keep on egging her on and telling her what a blob of fat she was and I wanted to join in, but unfortunately, you sometimes have to refrain from doing things in order to keep the peace in the world of business.  Take a look at the sushi below.

Also, the Japanese understand the importance of food presentation: - one of the reasons Japanese women are almost as effortlessly perfect as French women is that they can see an immaculately presented dish and almost feel full just by looking at it.  On the other hand, I think the Japanese go a bit too far at times.  For instance, I read an article about the enormous amount of time Japanese mothers spend preparing colourful bento boxes for their children to take to school.  I find this a bit bizarre: - one thing French women are very good at is being efficient.

How is it that we French get by on 35-hour weeks and have one of the highest productivity rates in the world in terms of output per worker per hour worked?  Simple: - we are efficient and we know what will add value in terms of making us perfect and what is just a pointless waste of time.  If women are busy doing useless tasks in the home, how can they possibly find the time to pursue glamorous careers (e.g. starting a fashion magazine)?  I recall reading an article by Cécile Delarue, who talks about her grandmother Georgine and how she has an effortlessly simple recipe for pineapple cake.  One thing Japanese women don't seem to understand is that there is being perfect and there is being effortlessly perfect.  What is the point in being perfect if you have to put in so much effort to be that way and end up making yourself miserable as a result?  Why waste so much time making something that is, on the surface, sophisticated, but in the end, just as bland?  This leaves very little time for writing blogs like these to boast about how effortlessly perfect we French women are.

However, there are a couple of aspects of Japanese eating habits that take the lustre off their shine.  Firstly, when it comes to food ingredients, the Japanese haven't really grasped how this works.  You go into a Japanese food store and you look at the ingredients list of products and find loads of E-numbers.  Yeek!  If E-numbers appeared on an ingredients list in France, you would have pandemonium, with people running out the supermarket in terror!  Another example of this is Japan's obsession with perfect fruit.  The Japanese like to cultivate super-fruit with perfect appearances and all the nutrients concentrated into a smaller number of fruit.  A French woman much prefers her fruit to be natural and she knows that fruit is one area where the presentation rule differs: - bruised fruit is likely to have been on the outside of the tree, meaning that it had more exposure to the sun, meaning that it has a much more delicious flavour.  Unnatural methods of food cultivation are completely unnecessary when it comes to producing foods with beautiful flavours and I pity the Japanese who, in their ignorance, do not know this!  Another thing I dislike about Japanese eating habits is the fact that food is extremely bland in Japan: - sushi has to be flavoured with wasabi paste to give it something resembling a flavour!  A French woman likes foods to be rich: - the rich flavours of French foods help explain why we can feel full on so little food.  Reblochon de Savoie is something a French woman just adores!  It is used to make an extremely rich dish known as tartiflette.

Another area which puts the Japanese in second place when it comes to being perfect is trains.  Japan was the first nation in the world (1964) to delve into high-speed rail, with the 0 Series Shinkansen, which was capable of speeds of up to 210km/h initially and 220km/h between 1986 and its retirement in 2008.

Since then, Japanese train technology has progressed, though some of the Shinkansen look a bit ugly, e.g. the E6 Series Shinkansen (the most recent model) shown below.

However, they aren't all bad.  The Shinkansen have lovely dinky little seats designed for dainty Japanese people.  The American who was with me on the trip got the right 'ump on account of being such a big fat blob of fat and therefore unable to fit into the seats.  Also, there are some models of Shinkansen that are visually appealing, e.g. the 800 Series shown below.

Other points I would note about the Shinkansen are the fact that the fleet is not used on the conventional lines, so either one has to change to a local service or wait until the town becomes big enough to be worth connecting by Shinkansen.  One thing that is great about the French TGV network is the fact that the TGVs can go pretty much anywhere.  For instance, Montélimar wanted a TGV station when they were gradually building the line southwards towards Marseille.  I just adore visiting Montélimar (famous for producing Nougat) and the fact that I can get there using a direct train from Paris in just 3h01m!

Also, I love the ritzy-glitzy atmosphere of Monaco and the fact that I can get there by direct train from Paris!  Neither of these towns are big enough to be worth building TGV lines to as yet, but the TGVs travel along the routes which were built because they were worth building and then continue along the conventional lines.

Another problem with the Shinkansen system is that it is so horrifically expensive (though I managed to keep the cost down with a ticket that foreigners can buy outside of Japan).  I know of one story of a heart specialist who sits on the board of Médécins sans Frontières (please note that this was founded in France, even though its headquarters are now in Geneva) who travels by local train because of the Shinkansen being unaffordable.  This may be because of motor maintenance: - all the Shinkansen have used the EMU configuration and many later models have 100% motored axles, which gives good acceleration, but ups the maintenance costs.

On the other hand, it should be noted that one achievement that only France and Japan have ever achieved is to get a high-speed line to pay for itself.  I have read that the construction costs have only been recovered from the Paris-Lyon and Tokyo-Nagoya high-speed lines.

So there you have it.  One somewhere-near-perfect country and one completely perfect country.  It is nice to know that if one is too far away to practicably travel to France within the desired timescales, one can travel to its closest rival in terms of being perfect.  However, when it comes to being effortlessly perfect, no-one comes close to a French woman.