So strange!

My friend recently went to Poland and came back with what I thought were bizzare stories.  I trust her and I believe her but... it's strange.

She said she didn't see any "low fat" anything, the portion sizes of EVERYTHING were huge, people eat high fat meals like huge sausages for breakfast with added greese poured on top, there are no gyms.... yet all the young women (under 40) are tiny.  She said she was one of the biggest girls there and she is a toothpick. 

So.... I can't even begin to figure out how this works.  Any suggestions?

Your friend probably wasn't tracking individual Poles the whole day and was making judgements based on restaurants or hotels?   Could be that she saw people having a 'rare treat' and thought it was 'standard daily fare'  My slender Czech friend (similar culinary traditions) will tuck down some heavy, greasy dish for supper  - her 'fried cheese and dumplings' is certainly memorable! -  but eats very lightly the rest of the time.  She may never set foot in a gym but she walks everywhere and likes to go running.

I agree with gi-jane. i recently lived in the Czech Republic for 6 weeks over the summer and all of my judgements about the people in the countries i visited (poland, vienna, budapest) is from what i actually SAW them do.. by this i mean, when i was at a restaurant, i would notice what they were eating for example. but i don't know if they eat out like that every night, i don't know what they cook at home other nights, i don't know what they ate for the rest of the day, etc..

what i DID notice (since living there for 6 weeks, we actually went to the grocery store and not just restaurants) the way people eat over there is very fresh, not many packaged foods to buy, so this could also play into their overall weight.

also, there is a LOT of walking done in many of those countries i visited and this could play a role as well. low-fat items were often rare but they had some stuff. and from what i remember, portions were bigger at some restaurants than others but they really never offered take-home boxes, maybe meaning that people stopped eating when they were full and left the leftovers to be thrown away instead of taking it home and "indulging" again.

just some thoughts, hope this helped.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in Germany.

1.) Many eat a hearty breadfast: wholegrain bread and cold cuts and cheeses. The whole grains metabolize better than our white bread and they are full until lunch, not forever snacking on candy bars, donuts or other junk food.

2.) In Germany lunch is the big meal of the day: meats, veggies & potatoes

3.) in the evenings they have a sandwich, kind of like breakfast.

4.) they walk a lot and many ride bicycles as transportation. 

5.) going for a walk is actually a social activity, so when they go to a cafe for coffee and cake, odds are they've been walking and windowshopping for better than an hour first (or afterwards)

When these same people come here and life our lifestyle, guess what?  Many of them gain plenty of vacation pounds!

I do believe that eating hearty with good nutritional values works better than lots of our high cal, high fat, high sugar stuff.