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Why do Americans say they lose weight in Europe? Maybe the secret isn't quality pasta, but legs...

2026-09-02 21:20:10Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Americans have a new theory that has been circulating on social media for a long time and is now entering serious food debates: when they go to Europe, they eat bread, pasta, cheese, sweets, drink wine, and yet they feel lighter, bloated less, and often lose weight.

At first glance, the most tempting explanation is food. Europe is seen as a continent with stronger food safety regulations, stricter standards and less tolerance for some ingredients that are widely used in processed foods in the US. In America, in recent months, there have been increasing alerts about contaminated foods: salads, frozen fruits, seeds, products with salmonella risks, and even products where dangerous contamination has been reported.

But Europe is not immune to these problems. There are outbreaks of foodborne infections there too, recalls The Guardian author Arwa Mahdawi. But the general perception remains that the European system is more protective of the consumer than the American one. That is why many Americans say that bread and pasta in the US "ruin" them, while in Italy or France they eat them without a problem.

Public figures like Joe Rogan have also entered the debate, saying that bread and pasta are bad for you in the US, but not in Italy. Some attribute this to the processed flour, additives, the way American food is produced, or the fact that many products in the US are more industrialized.

But Mahdawi offers a more down-to-earth explanation: maybe the problem isn't just the bread. Maybe it's the fact that in Europe, Americans walk a lot more.

In most European cities, especially when you're a tourist, you spend your day walking. You walk from hotel to cafe, from museum to restaurant, from station to historic center.

In the US, outside of a few large cities, this is often impossible.

American infrastructure is built for the car, not the pedestrian. There are neighborhoods without sidewalks, long commutes, streets hostile to walking, and a culture where the lack of a car is seen almost as a surprise.

The author also recalls the history of “jaywalking,” laws against crossing the street in unauthorized places, which were instigated in the 1920s by the automobile industry to present the pedestrian as the problem rather than the car as the danger. In other words, America didn’t lose walking by accident. It was gradually designed to make walking difficult.

So when Americans go to Europe and “lose weight,” it’s not certain that their bodies are reacting to some European flour magic. It could simply be that for the first time in a long time, they’re doing what American cities have taken away from their daily routine: they’re walking.

And that makes the debate more interesting. Because it's not just a history of food. It's a history of urban planning, public policy, and lifestyle. The question isn't just why Italian pasta seems lighter than American pasta. The question is why an American citizen needs to travel to Europe to discover that their body functions better when the city allows them to walk.


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