They number about two dozen; women bravely facing the uncompromising tally of a week's eating before a recent midmorning session at Weight Watchers. ”I haven't lost a kilo," groaned one rotund lady in a pink flowered dress, staring morosely at the scales. "And I didn't cheat once."

Welcome to the heartaches of full-figured women...living not in Detroit or Glasgow, but rather in Paris, France. The fabled city of light - and of fabulously stick-thin, chain-smoking women - is no longer coasting on the paradox that it can eat foie gras and wear size six too. Like everyone else in the world, the French are getting fat.

Today, roughly 12-15 percent of adults here are obese, according to national studies. About one out of seven French children is either overweight or obese. These numbers are still among the lowest in Europe - and certainly dwarf those in the United States, where almost one in three Americans is obese.

But at the current pace - obesity here is growing at five percent or more a year - France is galloping to close the gap by 2020, experts say. "What we're seeing is that obesity is becoming more frequent, it's affecting increasingly younger sections of the population and it's becoming more serious," said Arnaud Basdevant, head of the nutrition section at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris.

Analysts cite plenty of factors shaping the nation's waist line. Like Americans, French are spending less time exercising and more time in front of their television sets than a generation ago. Anti-globalisation activist Jose Bové may have rammed his tractor into a McDonalds in 1999 to protest "bad food," but millions of his countrymen are ardent fans of cheeseburgers and fries. Indeed, "MacDo" as the French call it, is the number one franchise in France, with more than 1,000 restaurants around the country. And, as in the U.S., obesity rates and bad eating habits are far higher among the country's working class and immigrant populations, experts like Basdevant say.

So as Americans snap up copies of Mireille Guiliano's "French Women Don't Get Fat" - the best-selling primer on the Gallic secrets of small portions and long walks -- 42-year old Crystelle Roux rolls her eyes. "I think French people actually eat very poorly," says the chubby research technician, who attended the recent Weight Watchers meeting in midtown Paris. "Before I enrolled in Weight Watchers I was eating a lot of starch, and hardly any vegetables." Even now, at a respectable 160 pounds - a 46-pound drop from a year ago - Roux speaks longingly of past indulgences. "I'd have a Big Mac, sometimes two," reminisces Roux, a native of Lyon, a city renowned for its cholesterol-loaded andouillette sausages and cream-laced meals.

A myriad of studies show French eating habits have changed radically in recent years - a trend that is likely to be reflected in new clothes sizes after a national resizing campaign wraps up this year. Vegetables and fruits are losing ground. Candy bars, burgers, soft drinks and pizzas are winning over Gallic hearts and bellies.

Other European stomachs are caving in as well. Citizens and their governments across the region are losing the battle of the bulge. In England, where more than one in five women and men are obese, popular television chef Jamie Oliver is on a crusade for healthier school lunches. But government plans to ban high-fat and sugar items from school meals and vending machines have yet to take effect.

In Italy, where an estimated 28 million Italians are overweight, former health minister Girolamo Sirchia exhorted his countrymen to check their growing girths with tape measures. Men's waistlines should not exceed 41 inches, Sirchia announced earlier this year; women's must be 35 inches or less. Sirchia has since lost his job in a government reshuffle. But Italians, veterans of ducking taxes and other unpopular strictures, were unlikely to follow his demands in any event.

It is left to France to issue the first government injunctions on tackling obesity. Soft drink vending machines were banned in public schools in September 2005. Another measure aims to force processed food manufacturers to include nutritional information in broadcast advertising - or face a fine.

"The French haven't been complacent," said Neville Rigby, policy director at the International Obesity Task Force, in London. "They're ahead of the game in Europe. They're saying, 'look we don't want our children to end up like the rest.'" But Jean-Marie Le Guen isn't satisfied. Last year, the Socialist deputy introduced an ambitious fat-fighting agenda. Among other measures, his draft legislation would ban food advertising on TV and make weighing children compulsory in schools. "Are we expected to watch this obesity epidemic grow and assume its fate?" asks Le Guen, a doctor by training.

He has reason to worry. The 52-year-old lawmaker confesses he himself tilts to "the slightly overweight zone," and has a penchant for indulging in "a bit too much of everything." But Le Guen's proposals have not won everyone over. Certainly not in a country that relishes debating. "If we had a way of preventing obesity, we wouldn't have obese people," said Vincent Boggio, a pediatrician at Dijon Public Hospital in eastern France, who has treated some 2,500 overweight children in his 25 years of practice. "The fact we have more and more obese people shows that prevention doesn't work." The answer? "You either change society, or accept fat people. Or create a law that bans fat people," Boggio says, only half tongue and cheek. "Maybe fining them until they trim down might work."

But if obesity is inevitable, France has been slow to accept it. Discrimination against those who are overweight is widespread at school and at work, government studies and news reports indicate. It is an intolerance Le Guen's bill also aims to combat. Nor has France's fashion industry embraced the full-figured women. "Round fashion is only just beginning," said Sylvie Fabregon, who handles the plus-sizes department for the Paris advertising agency, Contrebande. "There's still a feeling in France that being fat is a sort of sickness."

So the mystique remains of a nation of skinny people, who eat anything they want...in moderation. And the truth is that trim French still pack small cheese stores across the country, weighing the merits of buying a brie or a roquefort. And they will often eat one pastry, but not two.
In fact, some French researchers argue that the country's culinary traditions are the best silver bullet for tackling obesity.

"Many Americans -- especially the ones at the obesity meetings I attend - are very irritated that we can eat foie gras and drink wine and stay thin," said Basdevant, the French nutritionist. "But if French eat foie gras today, they'll eat string beans and salad tomorrow. What's bad is eating only foie gras."