Basic Pursuits

How do they do it? Those French guiltlessly dine on endless dishes smothered in rich, butter-based sauces. They never fail to eat dessert. Yet they don't get fat. Their obesity rate is a third of that of the U.S. The bastards!

Americans first deduced, with their penchant for seeking solutions to all problems in a single pill, that it was the red wine that keeps the French so thin. U.S. sales of pinot noir soared. So did our obesity rates.