Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 78


     
     1        A.   Yes, because of the olive oil.
     2
     3   Q.   What about France?
     4        A.   France has been called the French paradox.
     5
     6   Q.   Yes?
     7        A.  I actually have never thought of it as paradox because
     8        my wife studied in Paris, in France, so we have very close
     9        French friends and very often stay with them and their
    10        families, and the whole attitude in France is totally
    11        different, as you may well know, to food.  That food is one
    12        of the most important items in their budget whereas in
    13        Britain the house and the motorcar are rather more
    14        important, and the fact of the matter is that they are very
    15        insistent on two things.
    16
    17             One, is a wide diversity of foods and, 2, fresh foods,
    18        and with almost every meal in France you will find French
    19        people will have a salad of fresh vegetables with oil and
    20        vinegar, sometimes referred to as French dressing, on it.
    21        And, of course, what they are, in fact, doing is providing
    22        themselves with a much more diverse diet than we have been
    23        customarily used in Britain, a much wider range of
    24        nutrients, much higher proportion of anti-oxidants and, in
    25        general, the saturated fat intake is not that high.  Serge
    26        Renault in Lyon made a study in France amongst French
    27        farmers where he asked the very similar simple question,
    28        can you, within France, find differences, regional, in
    29        relation to dietary fats and mortality, as the French
    30        describe it because there is some doubt about the way the
    31        French describe mortality from heart disease.  But this was
    32        a French study, done by French people, using their own
    33        figures.
    34
    35             So any differences in French classification to British
    36        classification do not exist, and what Serge Renault found,
    37        and this was for INSERNE, which is the French equivalent of
    38        the Medical Research Council, what they found was that the
    39        dietary patterns of the French farmers, particularly in the
    40        north where they ate much more saturated fats than in the
    41        Southern or middle parts of France, followed the predicted
    42        or expected changes in cardiovascular risk factors as far
    43        as they could see.  So within France itself the evidence is
    44        there.
    45
    46   Q.   Now, can we return to our chart, please?  If you look in
    47        the right hand side you will see in 8 and 6, 14 tables,
    48        estimated daily consumption per person for different food
    49        stuffs?
    50        A.   Yes.
    51
    52   Q.   Sometimes they calculate in grammes per day and
    53        occasionally, as with milk, for example, or cheese, in
    54        calories per person per day?
    55        A.  Yes.
    56
    57   Q.   Can we look, first of all, at potatoes.  Cereals, you like,
    58        first.  Now, from the point of view of somebody in your
    59        field is the consumption of cereals a good thing or a bad
    60        thing?

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