The Austrian Paradox

You’ve heard of the French paradox, of course: All those annoyingly svelte citoyens de France who breakfast on croissants and pain au chocolat, slather their baguettes with runny Camembert while slicing off slabs of fois gras, partake of profiteroles and tarte tatin – and stay (annoyingly) svelte. Not to mention more-than-annoyingly smug.

The “paradox,” first noted in the late 1980s (60 Minutes placed it on our radar in 1991), was based on the epidemiological observation that French people eat diets rich in saturated fats but have a relatively low incidence of heart disease (an apparent contradiction to the widely accepted belief that high fat diets are a significant risk factor for heart disease). How do they do it, we fat-loving, decidedly un-svelte, walking-heart-attack Americans wanted to know.

The much-ballyhooed French “secret” was thought to be red wine. Drink enough of it, and it doesn’t matter how many goose livers and éclairs you consume. Just so you know, Americans’ consumption of red wine skyrocketed since the “paradox” was revealed. (We drink more wine than anyone else on the planet and more than twice the amount we did pre-paradox.) While we were drinking all this wine, our obesity rate jumped from 15 percent (1990) to close to 40 percent (2015). While we were drinking this wine, we held onto (and increased) our lead as #1 in heart disease among the “high-income countries” (western Europe and North America). So maybe it’s not the wine?

Which brings me to…the Austrian Paradox. I am writing this from Vienna, city of the Sacher Torte, of the everything mit schlag (that’s cream), of beer, of breakfasts of bread, cheese and meat, of meat, meat and more meat. Here’s the menu from the restaurant I went to a few nights ago. This is where I mention that Austria’s rate of obesity is less than half that of the U.S., as is its rate of diabetes. Austrians are half as likely to die of heart disease as we are. Yet they are bread, cheese and sausage eaters (and then there’s that strudel) who mostly seem to shun vegetables. And they drink a lot of beer. And they smoke at more than twice the rate we do.

Vas ist los?

We want the secret.

Okay, here’s the secret: The Austrians, the French… they live very different lives than we do. It is not one thing; it is everything. It’s lifestyle. They walk or bike to work, to shop, to do errands, to visit friends, to go to the museum. Kids walk or bike to school. Old people, really old people, walk everywhere. You see old people making their way up impossibly steep flights of stone steps, riding bikes, arguing politics in cafes.

The automobile is not a way of life. I’ve yet to see a drive-through. The idea of zipping through a kiosk to get a greasy bag of food to eat in the car is as bizarre to them as not owning a car is to us. (Yes, they do have McDonalds.) They don’t snack on garbage food from machines all day. Although I would not make the case that either the French or the Austrians have a full-blown “dolce vita” or “pura vida” attitude toward life, they sure seem to enjoy their lives, inhabit them, live them fully in a way we don’t. (As an aside, I’m currently on a Westbahn train full of commuters – and I am the only one on a laptop working.)

So if we are going to learn any lessons from the Old World, let’s look beyond red wine or good fat v bad fat. Let’s look at life.