by Diana Farrell
Serbe
Reading French Women Don't Get
Fat is like sharing a tisane (herbal tea) with a friend who
loves food, but stays slim. Unlike hard-hitting diet books, the message
that author, Mireille Giuliano, imparts is to savor, enjoy, take pleasure
in food. And if you are like us, when you are finished reading, you'll
even have a sexy French swing in your walk. Enjoy food, enjoy the body.
The French know something we don't
know. After all, the French eat and drink, and yet stay slim and live
long lives. In amazement, scientists call this The French Paradox.
Being French, Mireille Giuliano
knows the answer: eat sensuously. Being witty and wise, she shares the
mysteries of the French Paradox in French Women Don't' Get Fat.
Portion control is one of her answers, and it is a part of the French
attitude to food. Recast the mind, advises Giuliano, eat less and savor
more. Learn "the French way of enjoying those foods that can be
friend or foe depending on how we treat them." To convey the French
minddset, she quotes the writer, Colette who described the table as
"a date with love and friendship."
French women have their little
secrets, and Giuliano shares them with us, but the best aspect of her
book is its emphasis on the positive. Giuliano ignores the negative
'don'ts' of dieting. saying that 'don'ts' make us hate eating, hate
ourselves, and ultimately doom a diet to failure. Instead she presents
us with the do's that will reshape our thinking. Do drink water, water
and more water. Do drink wine and water together at your meal, sipping
each and savoring more. Do eat slowly and taste each mouthful. In three
bites, says Giuliano, your taste bites are satisfied. Do eat three meals
a day, do eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Do enjoy the freedom from
diets. "I indulge but in moderation, and without thinking I exercise
a natural portion control. "
Advising us to forgo eating a bag
of chips while multi-taking, Giuliano admonishes us to sit when we we
eat, to love the ritual of eating. Without didacticism, she tells us
to bring our senses to the table, be ready to savor and enjoy a wide
variety of tastes. To achieve this, give yourself a variety of foods
and be unabashed in using herbs and spices.
Giuliano's attitude is best expressed
when she talks about chocolate. As a chocolate lover, she says to enjoy
this creamy sweet in an unabashed (but moderate) manner. "Too often,
American women eat on the sly, and the result is more guilt than pleasure.
The tendency goes with an attitude that should be changed. Nothing is
sinfully delicious."
Recipes are included which Giuliano
says are home recipes, not diet recipes. Among the recipes are an asparagus
tart, a plum clafouti made without dough, salad of duck a l'orange,
grilled peaches with lemon thyme. It's in the portions and in the pleasure
with which you eat.
Mireille Giuliano is president and
CEO of Clicquot, Inc., the firm she helped found in 1984 and was its
first employee. She has been contributing articles on food, win,e travel
and lifestyle for years to a wide range of publications, including Town
& Country and the Quarterly Review of Wines. Educated in Paris,
she came to New York first as a translator/interpreter. She lives in
Manhattan with her husband, Edward.
The book has illustration by R.
Nichols.
©
