I'm an American of German-Irish descent, and I agree, except the part about eating all that bread and drinking beer! You consume that stuff, especially daily, every day, you WILL get fat. How old did these beautiful women look, BTW? If 21 or younger, of course at that age, anyone fairly small-boned can eat anything they want and remain skinny, not get fat.

I rode bicycles with a German guy as part of a meetup.com bicycling group. At the end of a 28-mile bike-ride, he then wanted to stop off for a couple beers (and he didn't stop at just a couple lol). He said "I ride bike so I can drink beer (and not get fat)". 28 miles probably burned off 1,000 calories. How many calories are in a six-pack of beer and a box of pastries?

The woman I was watching was probably about my age, in her 60's. I am not at all advocating eating large amounts of bread and drinking beer daily. I am advocating eating good healthy fresh food, slowing down while we eat, enjoying our food instead of inhaling it in the car and getting plenty of exercise.

Excellent and I agree!

I totally agree too Paddywest! It just makes sense, doesn't it? I think so many of ' us' eat on the run, eat unhealthy choices more often than not because of the ' convenience' ( if you want to call it that , or maybe laziness sometimes on my part ) and don't put exercise as a priority when it really needs to be, no matter how much we can get in . Anything is better than nothing. We just need to 'move' more!

Hope you had a great trip!

Hugs~

LMT

I lived in GE for 2 years. I also observed that most did a fair amount of walking and biking. Although they appear to be healthy, but male physical abuse of women is rampant there, and too common in the news and I feel it is partially due to the alcohol consumption and unhappiness. And then there is widespread cases of cirrhosis of the liver from the alcohol. Yes, they do appear to be happy and healthier, many are, but many are not. I learned these things originally on the Hohenfels US Army Base in GE during the first week I was living there on base, and it was a mandatory class to acclimate us to the culture and of things to watch out for. It was all in the class taught by the instructor.

What I found even stranger, was they had a cigarette vending machine about every 4 blocks throughout the cities and also in the home's suburbs outside of towns, like a checkerboard, a vending machine was available so just walk a few steps and pop in a 5 Deutsch mark coin and get a pack of 14 cigarettes.

Similar to France, where the drinking of red wine in good amounts, to say that red wine is great and good for health, and they tout the lack of heart disease, yet they say nothing at all about the cirrhosis of the liver, which very large numbers of people do suffer from and eventually die from.

So really, moderation in all things. What is healthy IS healthy and should be obvious. It is not in a package or box. It is not man made either.

This begs the question: What foods are healthy?