French people are getting fatter. I first visited France in 2000. I was amazed to see all these fit, healthy people running around. I came back in 2004 and immediately noticed there was a slight increase in fat people. And by fat, I mean noticeably fat, waddling around, tight clothes kind of fat. Obese. I moved here in 2005 and saw even more fat people. So, I agree the trend has arrived.

There's a couple of things to note about how the French eat and think about food in general. The French have a huge, rich culture around food. A typical French day starts with toast, pain au chocolat, or yogurt and coffee or tea or hot chocolate. That's breakfast. There's a "pause" at 10 for another pain au chocolat, croissant, cookie and more coffee. At noon, everyone, and I mean everyone sits down to a large (by American standards) lunch consisting of meat or fish, vegetable and bread, cheese for dessert and the obligatory wine. At four is the gouté which is usually cheese and a piece of bread. At seven is the apero, something salty and a beer, pastis or other such aperitif. At nine is diner, pretty much a repeat of lunch, with dessert consisting of a piece of fruit or yogurt (the French are huge on yogurt. There's whole aisles devoted to it in the supermarkets) Then everyone goes to bed.

Fresh ingredients are a must and the French have a mindset that surrounds food which is in season. So, you eat leeks in winter, melons in summer, crepes in the spring, grapes in fall, etc. However, really ingrained is the idea that when you do sit down to eat, you eat everything on your plate, and it better be a good heaping portion. Women included. I think this is a left over from their parents who suffered during the two world wars here. What is frowned upon is eating a lot of dessert or too many cookies at the pause, or too much cheese at the gouté. One piece of cheese, one cookie. The idea is to eat just enough to make to the next meal

So when you add processed, heavily salted, fatty foods in the mix, and then you're still expected to eat everything on your plate, I think this is the problem. And, I agree with Silenced (for a change), there's nowhere to work out here. I can't think of a single gym in the relatively small village where I live (20,000 people). However, a lot of people play tennis, swim, jog, ride horses and bikes and otherwise get exercise outside.

That said, there's one single McDonald's here and no other fast food outlets. Most people here consider pizza from a pizza truck, or a kebab sandwich to be fast food. I don't know any women who eat at McDonald's. And, I don't know anyone who doesn't sit down for every meal.

Along with the trend toward more processed food, I think we'll see some gyms popping up soon. But, because the French are more united culturally around food, they're going to bring about change in a more global way. I imagine they will soon ban commercials with processed foods aimed at kids, start a healthy eating program authorized by the government. And they'll mostly all follow it because, well, that's what the French do. Especially if it's French.

but isn't this grounds for impeachment? If a president lies about his military past during and after his campaign does this constitute grounds for impeachment? Would we have elected him in 2004 if we knew that he'd ditched his lame military service? Drank all the time, trashed his apartment and pissed on a car? Aren't presidents supposed to act a little bit more responsibly, even in their youths? And by the way, as a "soldier" in the National guard, I think Lt. Bush would have been thrown in the brig for his drunken antics.

I'm furious that we have, at least, a LACK of proof that Bush served in the National Guard. Isn't this enough to get the little boy out of office? Where's the outrage over his behavior? Forget about forgeries, if Bush can't prove to the American people that he acted honorably and responsibly during his military service he needs to be removed from office.

If anyone can enlighten me about his actions during the Vietnam war in regard to possible impeachment, I await you with bated breath. Please, please is it possible to use this aspect of the story to get him out of there?