anyone here living in france???

i love CCP but i do have a hard time finding stuff on the food lister that is well.....french. granted i splurged at a birthday party and ate some confit canard. if i tell you what it is you might not believe me and probably kick me out of this program. and its not too easy to find things like chevre, foie gras and other speciality dishes that shouldn't be eating. so frankly i depend a lot on items with nutritional info on it and add my own. any frenchies have any ideas???? J'apprécierais toutes les informations que vous pourriez me donner!

it's been... *counts on fingers and toes*  almost 20 years since I had a french class  :(   but is canard the word for 'duck'?

I thought so (but not sure).... and so I searched for duck on our foods database - anything on here look like what you ate?

sorry for the delay. thats what i inputted actually. sad really.....duck fat and well some duck. i cannot figure out for the life of me why so many of these french chicks are skinny. if i made a menu of most things eaten here i think most would have a heart attack just reading about it. in fact, my mother in law told me ( still under speculation) that duck fat has no cholesterol. and btw confit canard ( preserved duck) is made by cooking the duck in it own fat and preserving it in a can or jar. afterwards is super tender and well....(bite my tongue) good. really good. we topped off the weekend with some super rich cheese and potatoes cooked in the duck fat and a huge leg of pork seasoned and aged ( proscuitto-like) called jambon bayonne for the region that just sat on a rack and people cut a piece off as they walked by during the day. unbelievable. i swear it was a calorie fest. and if i showed pics of his family you would believe how thin they were. perhaps some of this will rub off on me. but i have been working at it since i joined oct 28th i have lost 4.1 kg which is like 8. something pounds. thankfully i have discovered the light calorie, super rich in vitamin dish 'ratatouille' its really saving my dieting life. ;)

Anyone looking for the nutritional breakdown of French foods will find nearly all of them at: http://www.afssa.fr/TableCIQUAL/index.htm (though you will need a few words of French but things like glucides and lipides shouldn't pose you much of a problem and you can always use a dictionary).

FOIGRAS- hi! im going to france next week and looked at the link you gave, what does it mean when it says "calories for labeling"?

i know its in kcal and i think kcal=calories in the US

thanks!

kcal are also kcal (kilocalories) in the US, although common public usage is cal and calories.

The difference (not that I have seen any difference in the resulting numbers but then I don't use any milk products) is explained in their FAQ (relevant bit below). If your French is not up to it, it is basically a slightly different method of calculation, the former being more precise than the second one, but it is the latter that must, by law, be used for food labeling. NB azote=nitrogen.

 

Quelle est la différence entre « énergie » et « énergie, étiquetage » ?

Il existe plusieurs méthodes de calcul de l'énergie (ou valeur énergétique) des aliments.
Pour tous les aliments de la table de composition, la valeur énergétique a été calculée en utilisant les coefficients suivants :

- 17 kJ/g (4 kcal/g) pour les glucides (à l'exception des polyols)
- 10 kJ/g (2,4 kcal/g) pour les polyols 
- 17 kJ/g (4 kcal/g) pour les protéines 
- 37 kJ/g (9 kcal/g) pour les lipides 
- 29 kJ/g (7 kcal/g) pour l'alcool (éthanol) 
- 13 kJ/g (3 kcal/g) pour les acides organiques

Les valeurs d'«énergie» sont calculées en prenant en compte les teneurs en «protéines», calculées sur la base de la teneur en azote total et de facteurs spécifiques (dits facteurs de Jones), qui peuvent différer d'une famille d'aliment à une autre (par ex. 6,38 pour les produits laitiers).
Les valeurs d'«énergie, étiquetage» quant à elle, correspondent au mode de calcul donné par la directive 90/496/CEE du 24 septembre 1990, relative à l'étiquetage nutritionnel des denrées alimentaires, qui prend en compte la teneur en «protéines brutes» c'est-à-dire la teneur en azote total multipliée par le facteur 6,25, quel que soit l'aliment.

oh, hmm, i dont speak ANY french! lol

they dont use kj, do they? it would be kcal which =a calorie i believe.

i guess ill just go for common sense when choosing what to have...

kilojoules (kJ) are another measure that is used often on european products, however, there is also always the info in kcalories (which are the same as our Calories). The word we use is capitalized because the non-capitalized one refers to .001 of a kcal. 

So, 1 kcalorie=1 Calorie (the meaure we use in the US). 

 

 

thanks!

yea, and then sometimes its per 100g portion i think.  i dont think ill really have a handle on it plus, i think for lunch if i go to a bakery and just get a ham sandwich or something, there is no way of telling.

at a supermarket, since i know NO french, we will get staples bc well be in an apt+can cook, ill get bread, milk, cereal, do they have cans of tuna there? im sure, rt?

and those foods im thinking will be in kcal per 100grams and then look how many grams are in the package and divide?

I live in Italy and we have canned tuna, so I am going to guess that our neighbor has it as well.  :)

haha, yea, thanks!! and italy, so beautiful!!

i figure my 100 gram and dividing soultion should work

One useful thing to know about French sandwiches, the ones made using baguettes: they are invariably either a third of a baguette or half of a baguette (easy to eyeball which is which) and a baguette is 250g. Then all you have to do is guesstimate the contents! Sandwich jambon is likely to have about 60g of ham in it.

 

PS. French for tuna is thon (pronounced "ton" to rhyme with "song" but without the "g" sound at the end and the "h" is silent).