We are mostly fat and very often drunk

WE ALL know that when it comes to cultural superiority, France has cornered the market. If any of us remain unconvinced, look no further than books which tell us French Women Don’t Get Fat and French Children Don’t Throw Food.

In a place that does Nutella for breakfast, when the rest of us are fretting about juice cleanses, you’d wonder how this can be. How can France eat so much pain au chocolate and drink so much wine, yet not produce a nation of fat drunks? How do they get away with it? Could it be that they don’t have a binge-purge culture? That they don’t emulate the Americans? Or are they really just better than us?

There is no English language equivalent for savoir-vivre. The French might know how to live — they tend to spend as much time talking about, shopping for, and preparing dinner, as actually eating it — but this seems to be across the board, rather than the preserve of a minority of pretentious foodies.