 The so-called French paradox is a term coined in the 80s by three Frenchmen to explain a curious finding. If you chart death from heart attack versus the amount of saturated fat in cholesterol countries consume, there appears to be a straight line. The more animal foods populations eat, the higher their death rates appear to be. Conversely, maybe if we got meat, egg, and dairy intake low enough, we could bring coronary death rates down towards zero. But two countries fell outside the line. Finland seemed to be doing worse than expected, and France appeared to be doing better, hence the paradox. How could France have similar saturated fat in cholesterol intake as Finland, but five times fewer fatal heart attacks? Everyone had their pet theories. Was it the whining? Was it the dining? Yes, animal foods were associated with coronary heart disease mortality, but plant foods appeared protected. So maybe the fact that the French reading four times as many vegetables helps account for their lower death rates. But it turns out there's apparently no paradox at all. As Mary Nessel stutely pointed out, the French had just recently started eating so unhealthy and chronic diseases take decades to develop. I mean, the US had been eating this way for 40 years, the French had just picked it up. It's like we all started smoking today and found no measurable increase in lung cancer tomorrow. It wouldn't mean smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, it just takes a while. So what happens when you actually run the numbers? If you compare coronary death rates to the amount of animal found cholesterol levels at the time, France does seem unusually protected. And if you compare death rates to what they were eating two decades before, they're still pretty far off the line. Ah, but it turns out French physicians under-report a schemic heart disease deaths on death certificates by as much as 20% according to a World Health Organization investigation. So if you correct for that, then France basically comes back right in line with the death versus animal fat and death versus cholesterol lines with about four times the fatal heart attack rates as Japan and decades after four times the animal fat consumption.