Any woman who read and despaired after reading Mireille Guiliano's 2004 book, "French Women Don't Get Fat," can now indulge in schadenfreude. "Obviously, French women do get fat!" Elsa Lafon, the daughter of the French publisher of the book, told Geraldine Baum of the Los Angeles Times .

Already, 42% of the French population is either overweight or obese, according to the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). The rate among children and adolescents has quadrupled in the last 25 years and has been growing almost as fast as in the United States.

"If you look at the statistical curve, we're now where the U.S. was in the 1970s," said Olivier Andrault, a food expert with the French Union of Consumers. "It means if we do nothing, in a few years the French will be as fat as Americans."

The country noticed its expanding waistline in the late 1990s, when a once-a-decade study by Inserm turned up a slight increase in the numbers of obese women. It was a statistical blip, but epidemiologists, aware of the pandemic elsewhere, launched more frequent studies -- and found a growing trend.

In fact, the Mme. Guiliano's title was changed in France to These French Women Who Don't Get Fat: How They Do it." No, they don't eat red wine, chocolate, foie gras. They diet. Same old same old. And while the book was a hit in North America, it sold only modestly to more realistic French women.