wtf is going on in france
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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"Let them eat cake" moment.
Jokes apart, the children of the rich are obese, the children of the poor are too thin. Both tendencies contribute to malnutrition.
https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profiles/europe/western-europe/france/
You’re mixing two population averages, so you need a weighted calculation.
Let’s approximate first: France has about 67 million people out of roughly 447 million in the European Union, so ≈15% French and 85% non-French.
We set up:
Overall EU rate = weighted average 1.7=0.15⋅8+0.85⋅x
Solve:
1.7=1.2+0.85x 0.5=0.85x x≈0.59
So, among non-French Europeans, the rate is roughly 0.6 per 100,000.
That’s substantially lower than both the French rate (8) and the EU average (1.7), which makes sense given how high the French figure is relative to the rest. Also this is pretty much what I read for Vietnam in this chart.
thanks France, for ruining our numbers!
it says Europe though, not the European Union
if you click the question mark near the Europe statistic, it says it also includes countries like Russia and the UK which mess with the statistic a lot
Be aware, very old people die from this as a secondary cause from a primary of Alzheimer's and other dementias. They just stop eating. It's a misleading statistic to use to identify poverty based malnutrition. It's a very common diagnosis in terminal patients. And the way US billing works, getting the most diagnosis codes recorded is important for reimbursement. It's likely the cause for this disparity.
Edit: yeah 2015 is when ICD-10 adoption and cms billing changes went into play. And then the rate quadrupled. This is an artifact of the US's dumb private/public insurance model for end of life as more people gamed the system for reimbursement. The spread of billing practices over time.
Why is France also an outlier?
Gave a detailed answer: https://lemmy.ml/post/46593201/25415914
Ah, thanks. I figured that, like the US, it was some kind of other policy that had a side effect of artificially skewing the numbers.
What's the US's excuse in this case?
Go read the comment I initially replied to.
Dunno. I'm a US nurse. I don't know how France does their death certificates. Wouldn't surprise me that they're more granular though.
I see that some people try to attribute this to older population and/or Alzheimer, but even by those metrics the countries above are pretty close and wouldn't justify such a big gap:
As for the reliability of data, it's from a peer reviewed study by an American university. If they had a way to make the China data look worse, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate.
You wouldn't expect more (or less) primary causes if more secondary causes were reported in multifactorial deaths. I'd imagine the fact that in the US CMS adopted ICD-10 in 2015 and the rapid rise after would make that obvious enough. Unless you believe there's some pre-COVID etiology for malnutrition that explains the jump I'm not seeing.
Is France really so far above the European average? Or am I reading this wrong?
I am french. I already saw these figures and tried to understand why it was like that. The figures might be technically correct but it doesn't make sense to compare them with other countries. 5000 people dying each year of hunger, it would be revolting.
We do not let people die of starvation in France, unless we think it is the best thing to do. We have this concept of "sédation profonde et continue". Assisted suicide is prohibited in France. So people that suffer from uncurable decease can stop receiving food and hydratation until they die. They continue to receive painkiller or are even put in coma because letting them die that way is legal and considered the most human thing to do. A french christian newspaper wrote an article about it End of life: Are we really letting patients to die of hunger and thirst in France?. They are really opposed to assisted suicide and even them are OK with this process. So technically, we are letting people die of hunger.
About people suffering from hunger, we have food bank to help them, meal costs 1€ at university... It is far from perfect but we are not letting people die like the figures would let imagine.
About overseas regions, it is not that poor. The poorest overseas region, Mayotte, has been mostly destroyed by a cyclone two years ago. Both public services and NGOs thanks to a lot of donation reacted quickly to avoid famine. The situation is still bad but people are not starving.
Hope I answer the question
things don't doing well in the french overseas regions?
Likely the same reason for the US
French overseas regions are officially part of France, while US except Hawaii are not, so they likely are not counted in this statistics for US. Also the France has 4-4,5% of total population in overseas territories while US have around 1% so their impact in case of France would be also over 4 times greater.
So it's most certainly just the good US of A.
Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands aren't counted?
I looked at the source and no, they aren't, just the proper states.
That's wild!
Not much is proper in the states these days.
no one look at our tea
i doubt that, the us is in worst conditions than many third world countries
Half that spike is the US Navy.
Why is France so high?
Probably because France counts their colonies as part of France. Mayotte specially has to be contributing to this
Vietnam undefeated
Yeah, but those are poor people, so 🤷♂️
When they counted, they counted hundreds of thousands! We didn't count therefore the number is zero, well done! The good and simple people of Starvation Land can sleep easy knowing that no one ever starves in Starvation Land
/s
Usian nationalists might soon be telling each other this story, to feel less hungry...
It feels good to be starving, knowing that someone else is starving more
dark /s
So you consider France a communist country ? I dont get it
It's sarcasm.