Memoirs and diet books may stretch the truth, but the numbers don't lie: a new study commissioned by the French Union for the Clothing Industries reveals that French women are, in fact, getting fatter.

Mireille Guiliano went on Oprah last May to plug her bestselling “non” diet book, French Women Don't Get Fat. When the paperback edition comes out, I'm hoping Oprah will invite her back to square off with Dr. Jean-Marie Le Guen, author of Obesity: The New French Sickness. I have a feeling M'sieur Le Guen might shred Madame Guiliano's premise into, well, a million little pieces.

If French kids don't stop slathering the Nutella on their baguettes, the French could be as fat as Americans by 2020. Dr. Le Guen has been sounding the alarm about France's growing obesity epidemic for some time now, and predicts that the topic will be an important theme in the next election, as French politicians seek solutions to the ever widening problem of widening waistlines.

In defense of Mireille Guiliano, I agree wholeheartedly with her common sense approach to diet. Eating ought to be a pleasure; meals should be savored. The problem is, the French are about as likely to linger over a lovingly prepared dinner as Americans are these days.

A European frozen food company called Findus recently filmed French people eating, and the results were startling: The average French meal now lasts all of 38 minutes, down from 88 minutes 25 years ago. And it's more likely to be eaten in front of the television set, too.

As the French adopt our eating habits, they begin to look more and more like us. Can they continue to feel so superieur when they've boosted McDonald's sales in France by 42% in the past five years?

In Mireille Guiliano's segment on Oprah, she said, “In France we have a saying, joie de vivre, which actually doesn’t exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.”

There's another French expression for which we have no equivalent: “Bien dans sa peau.” It means, literally, to feel good in one's skin. Kind of a foreign concept in our culture, though Dove’s SuperBowl ad promoting its Campaign For Real Beauty generated a lot of buzz by touching on the issue. I wonder, in the wake of all this Gallic weight gain, how many French women are feeling good in their skins, these days?