Dealing out a diet to French families

Press, 3 July 1978, Page 12

Dealing out a diet to French families

By

JOHN HARRISON in Paris

In France, where eating is a national pastime, 35 million men and women are on the sick list because of what they eat. Madame Simone Veil, the French Minister for Health, who has just launched a new campaign to try and change French eating habits, is tackling the problem in the way a mother might try to persuade a recalcitrant child to do something it does not want to do. She is sponsoring a new card game which will be on sale throughout France from July called “Eat Right’’ (Manager Juste). It consists of a 120-card game for two to six people with rules that contain elements of happy familes, rummy and Monopoly.

"Three Frenchmen out of four suffer in varying degrees from the consequences of the way they eat,’’ says Mme Veil. “And this can be anything from dental decay to diabetes, too much cholesterol, high blood pressure — the list is a long one.”

She turned the problem over to a committee for health education composed mainly of nutrition experts who worked out not a diet, but a plan for eating wisely. Instead of issuing the usual pamphlet the committee called in a public relations firm who came up with the Card game idea.

The game consists of composing the right kind of menu from seven different groups of food each with different coloured cards and mixing them to get the right balance each day. There are 95 different foods in all. There are also cards which give you a bonus and others that lose you points as well as eight family cards.

The idea is to instruct people that they can still eat roast lamb and apple pie but that they should learn how to combine their menu in the right way. If you have two red cards in your hand one which says roast beef and the other fillets of sole one of them has to be thrown out in the game as well as in real life — too much protein is as bad as too much carbohydrate.

French nutrition experts say that their countrymen are eating too much meat and are neglecting bread, milk and cereal which, eaten in the right proportions, are essential for good health. The game teaches what other foods store extra sugar and fat units, both bad.

High on the list of baddies are soft drinks and ice cream. Penalties in the game of eating right are given to those who hold a card showing a family eating strawberries or fresh peaches in winter and a bonus to the

family who eat bread every day.

The Eat Right game is aimed at normal families without any particular weight problems. 0.F.N.5., Copyright.