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Your very good 'ealth
The Guardian, February 20, 2001
Yesterday it emerged that the French will soon live longer than any other nation. So, asks James Meek, what's their secret?
In 1965, a French lawyer, André-François Raffray, took a gamble on statistics that was to cost him and his descendants dear. He acquired the flat of a 90-year-old woman, Jeanne Calment, agreeing to pay her a lifetime pension of 2,500 francs a month in exchange. It seemed reasonable to think Calment would die before him. After all, he was only 47.
But the decades flew past, and while the pensioner thrived, Raffray went into a sad decline. On Christmas Day 1995, aged 77, the notary died, having paid out three times the market value of the apartment. At her nursing home in Arles that day, Calment, aged 120, dined on chicken liver, roast duck and Yule log.
She would enjoy life for another two years before dying, the longest-lived human being whose age can be confirmed by reliable records. "I took pleasure when I could. I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky," she said.
Was it mere luck? Perhaps something else was at work. Calment was exceptional. But with a glass of red wine in one hand and a French health insurance card in the other, our neighbours appear to be dancing their way towards being the longest-lived nation on earth.
The French already run the Japanese close in terms of average life expectancy. At a conference in San Francisco at the weekend, a joint team of US and French researchers declared that, if recent trends in death rates continue, average life expectancy in France would reach 85 by 2033, two years ahead of Japan, well ahead of Britain and leaving the US one-and-a-half centuries behind.
It was a Bordeaux cardiologist, Serge Renaud, who coined the phrase "the French paradox" - pointing out that, despite eating a diet high in saturated fat, the French tended to live longer and had one of the lowest rates of coronary and cardiovascular disease in the industrialised world.
He put it down to wine. Two or three glasses a day, he said - with some heavy scientific data to back it up - acted as a cure-all, combating not just heart disease but cancer (although more than four glasses has the opposite effect).
It was a great boost to Gallic pride in France's civilised lifestyle, not to mention French wine exports. In the Anglo-Saxon world, burger-guzzlers and diet obsessives alike ground their teeth. McDonald's has so far resisted putting wine on the menu in Britain and the US, perhaps because it can't work out whether to market it as an iced drink or as a dip, but many of the world's most influential public health bodies now accept that a little wine does you good.
In Britain, we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. No scientist has yet done with beer or whisky what Renaud did with wine - tracked the health of 34,000 middle-aged men, almost three-quarters of them regular wine drinkers, in eastern France over 12 to 15 years.
More to the point, the difference between the life expectancy of French men and men in England and Wales is now tiny. In 1998, it was 74.8 years for both. It is French women who are living longer. In 1998, they had a life expectancy of 82.4, compared to 79.7 for women in England and Wales.
Marjorie Marais, who grew up in Brittany and now works in publishing in London, says that the difference in drinking culture between the two societies is very marked - as much to do with rhythm as quantity. "The French drink a lot more regularly, in smaller quantities. In England, people binge a lot."
But it is not just about lifestyle choice. The French healthcare system, funded by compulsory insurance from individuals and employers, is better.
"Here, you might get a cervical smear once every three years," says Marais. "In France, you're encouraged to get a check-up every six months if you're sexually active. You might have to pay something like three pounds, depending on what cover you have. Any kind of test takes longer here because you have to go through your GP. If you've got a pain in a specific part of your body you can go straight to a specialist. You don't have to see a GP first."
Jacques Vallin, director of research at the Institut National D'Études Démographiques in Paris, is sceptical about some of the claims made for the "French paradox", pointing to statistical discrepancies in, for instance, different ways of recording deaths in different countries.
Statistics appear to show higher death rates from alcohol-related disease in the north of France than the south, he says, despite the fact that surveys showed the south drank more. The reason is that there is a stigma attached to drinking in the north, so people are more likely to lie.
Vallin, too, points at improvements in the French health service as a reason for greater average longevity - such as better training and equipment to deal with cardiac emergencies.
But, at 59, Vallin isn't living up to the image that jealous English office-workers conjure up as they gnaw at their cold, limp tikka wraps. No two-hour, three-course lunch, conversing over a bottle or two of fine Bordeaux with friends. He had a quick lunch of courgettes and a bit of fish in the staff canteen. What, no wine? "No wine ... everything you eat is poison. So the best idea is to eat a very great variety of things. In France, we have quite diverse food, I think. If you go to the US, food is more and more the same for everybody, every day."
Average life expectancy is a blunt statistic. There are many wonders concealed within. It is true, if not immediately obvious, that the longer you live, the greater your chance of exceeding the average - particularly if you reach 65.
Another is the extraordinary rate at which the number of centenarians is increasing, in France and in Britain. In 1950, there were thought to be only about 200 people aged 100 or over in France. In 1998, there were 6,840; and by 2050 there could be 150,000 in France, and only slightly fewer in Britain.
It may be, of course, that today's British twenty- and thirtysomethings are doing enough to overtake France in the latter half of this century. It may be that ecstasy, overwork, binge drinking, video games, evening TV and daytime IT, nightclub dehydration, chips, vodka and cranberry juice, rain and mobile phone radiation is exactly the magic recipe required to push our average lifespan up. But I wouldn't bet my flat on it.
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