Book Review - French women don't get fat

I usually try not to judge a book by it's cover. However, "French women don't get fat" leaves me with little choice; it sometimes does get as pretentious and elitist as it's title sounds.

Agreed, America is the land of plenty...of not so good food choices (avoiding them is not rocket science either). And many restaurants do not serve the healthiest portion sizes. However, the author Mireille Guiliano overdoes the berating of American women, especially with lofty language suggesting that only french women are aware of certain healthy living facts. I started reading the book with great expectations, and soon realized that in reality, women from almost all cultures in the world have practised the author's suggestions, for many centuries. To suggest that only French women have a monoploy on sensible eating, fine living, and other core human emotions like love and laughter is rather preposterous.

The author shares "secrets only known to french women" such as -
1) Drink lots of water
2) Eat lots of fruits and vegetables
3) Include lots of soup in your diet
4) Walk as much as possible
5) Eat lots of low fat yoghurt
6) Dramatically reduce your portion sizes
7) If you eat one heavy meal, compensate with another light meal
8) Enjoy food, don't make a big deal out of dieting

Uh...duh....i thought ALL of us knew that?????!!!!!

Just when I was about to overlook the author's penchant for adding unnecessary french twists to well meaning commonsense, the book got a little too elitist for my taste. I'm not being sarcastic; the author really offers gems like -

1) Do not eat fruits and veggies UNLESS you have procured them directly from a fancy farmer's market (sure, such sources are incredibly nice. but what do I do during winter, or if I cannot travel to or live near such markets?)

2) Only eat expensive hand crafted artisan bread

3) Always splurge on expensive chocolate

4) Do not eat oranges purchased from grocery stores, try and fly them in from Florida

5) Regularly drink and cook with premium champagne (recommended brand: Veuve Clicquot; CEO of Clicquot company: The author of this book Mireille Guiliano herself!!!gawwwdddd!!!)

6) When dining out with friends, order a full dessert, but then pretend to talk and discretely signal the waiter to clear away your barely touched plate!

7) Eat only fresh nuts and blueberries directly picked off the orchard trees from your back yard. Wait, you dont have a backyard orchard? (See, this is why you are probably not french and why you are probably fat)

8) Eat only one thin slice of bread with dinner

9) If you dont have bread, just eat cake

(ok, i made the last one up, but the author just barely stopped short of saying that!)