Spaniards (and American Tourists in Spain) Don’t Get Fat

Clearly, all drinks should
come in a chocolate cup.

My husband and I went to Madrid in March. He went on business and I went to see how much I remembered from Spanish II almost 20 years ago (not much), drink sangria (a lot), and sample the local cuisine (a whole lot). On the day we arrived, we went on a great tapas (no, I didn’t say topless) tour of the city, stopping at three tapas bars to sample their specialties, cervesa, and sangria; plus a pit stop for a shot of liquor inside an edible chocolate cup. This was by far my belly’s favorite 14 Euro expenditure of all time.

The next morning, feeling guilty about our night of overindulgence, we went for a run through Parque del Retiro, Madrid’s central park. It was ridiculously crowded, even for a 70-degree Saturday morning. People were running, walking, rollerblading, and biking wherever there was room. And everybody was fit.

Examples of Spaniards. You're welcome.

While the only trees we saw in Spain we safely constrained within park gates, the Spaniards in-shape physiques were everywhere. As we walked around taking in the sites (mostly restaurants and bars), we noticed that these tapas-loving, ham-eating, partying-until-6-am, cigarette-smoking locals were all thin. 

Pig at the airport:
He is only smiling because he
is getting the hell out of Spain.

The food wasn’t particularly healthy. At times I felt hard pressed to find a fruit or a vegetable. A lot of the foods were fried (my mouth is watering thinking about the calamari). And then there’s the jamón (ham). Ham is ubiquitous (i.e., freaking everywhere) in Madrid. Madrid is home to a chain of restaurants called Museo de Jamón (ham museum), not to be out done by Palacio del Jamón (ham palace). In the touristy parts of Madrid, one of these shops is on pretty much every block.

Perhaps Spaniards wouldn't
be so slow if they invested
in big-girl size cups of coffee.

While the Spaniards spent a lot of time in the park, we also saw them sitting around eating—A LOT. Things in Spain take a really long time. They eat dinner at 11 pm; it takes FOREVER to bring the check; the lines at the airport stretch into oblivion while the three United employees leisurely check passports. Spaniards are god-awful slow when they’re not running around the park.

As with the end of every vacation, we were scared to weigh ourselves when we came home. It turned out that there was no need to worry. I lost a pound and my husband only gained half a pound. It appears that the super-awesome Spanish thinness wore off on us too.

This octopus was so fresh that it swam
to the bar on its own accord. This
ain't no Red Lobster.

The main difference between eating out in Madrid and eating out in America seemed to be the level of processing. Things just seemed a lot fresher, a lot more natural in Spain.

Processed foods tend to by higher in fat and sugar, both known culprits in the battle of the bulge. They also are engineered to taste good and to play to our natural caveperson instincts to take in as much fat and as many calories as possible since the next food shortage is immanent. Our trip to Madrid sparked my curiosity about whether there was something a little more complicated at work. Is there a difference in how our bodies process whole foods versus processed foods?

I did a Google search and found a lot on this topic—a lot of really questionable theories, that is. There were blog posts about how toxins from processed foods collect in body fat and, uh, make the body fat weigh more (or something like that); articles about how processed foods make the body work harder (which would actually burn more calories, not less); and Kirstie Alley’s new diet plan (yes, she’s at it again). Just a couple of minor issues—none of these articles cited research or made a lick of sense.

While people are blogging about this subject ad nauseam, few are researching it. Hours of searching the peer-reviewed literature turned up exactly one article. Pomona College researchers experimented on 18 subjects to see if a processed cheese sandwich a la Kraft Singles Prepared Cheese Product on white bread reacted differently than a slice of natural cheddar on multigrain. It turns out there was a pretty substantial difference.

Our bodies burn energy three ways: basal metabolic rate (BMR) (the calories that the body burns doing normal bodily functions like breathing), activity, and through the thermal effect of foods (TEF) (i.e., the energy our bodies use to breakdown food, digest it, use nutrients, and do all sorts of other things). On average, 10% of our calories are burned through TEF, but that number can fluctuate quite a bit. Protein takes the most energy to metabolize, followed by carbohydrates, then by fats. Foods that are structurally more complex, that is they have more nutrients, more fiber, and more protein, take more energy to process. Whole foods are generally more complex than processed foods.

Step away from the processed cheese
food and no one gets hurt.

The Pomona College researchers carefully matched the two cheese sandwiches fed to their subjects; both sandwiches contained the same number of calories, and the same ratio of bread to cheese (60% bread and 40% cheese). The researchers measured the subjects' metabolic rate before eating to get a baseline and then every hour after that.

The researchers found that after eating the processed cheese sandwich, the subjects burned 50% less calories than after eating the natural cheese sandwich. 


And by tapas, I mean wine.

Even with such limited research, I believe that our bodies respond better to real food than to processed crap. Really, I just like the idea of eating and drinking my way through Madrid guilt free. Bring on the unprocessed, all natural tapas! Lots of them! 

The one article I could find:

Barr, SB, Wright, JC. (2010). Postprandial energy expenditure in whole-food and processed-food meals: implications for daily energy expenditure. Food & Nutrition Research. 54: 5144.