Polysaturation Point

In Britain, 60,000 members of slimming clubs claim that collectively they shed 1,500 tons of fat a year. In West Germany, a ten-year-old Schlankheits-welle, or slimming wave, has helped cut annual per capita consumption of potatoes from 109 kilos to 92 kilos. Even in France, there has been a notable move by embonpoint watchers from the sauce-rich grande cuisine to simpler, lower-calorie meals. Throughout Europe these days, all too solid citizens refer to the latest weight-paring magazines and diets in the awed terms once reserved for three-star restaurants. They seem to have reached polysaturation point.

Traditionally addicted to glutinous pasta, pudding and pastry, Europeans in the past have been less concerned than Americans about the health risks posed by obesity. Then, too, a slender figure has never been as universally admired on the Continent as it is in the U.S. In West Germany, where Doppel-kinnepidemie -the double-chin epidemic -was a bulgy badge of the postwar economic miracle, nutritionists warn direly that 78% of all citizens are still overweight and some 70,000 a year die prematurely of diabetes, coronaries, and other ailments accentuated by overeating. Three slenderizing volumes by diet expert Ulrich Klever of Bavaria -Calorie Compass, Protein-Plus Diet and Everything That Makes You Slim -have sold nearly 500,000 copies, while sales of the Brigitte Diet Club book have reached 750,000 copies in four years.

The most fashionable spas in France now offer thalassotherapy, a kilo-cutting regimen that combines diet, exercise and extensive-sea water massage. Furthermore, Gallic dieting is far from dull. Michel Guerard, the famed chef who helped popularize the low-calorie cuisine minceur, lures patrons to his spa at Eugenie-les-Bains with a gourmet diet (1,000 calories a day) that eliminates fats and starches without losing flavor.

Among the Continent's most determined weight losers are the Italians. The old stereotype of the ravioli-plump Italian mama has changed to that of a Swedish-svelte city signorina. Says Joan Marble Cook, an American author who attended a reducing class in Rome: "You'd think Italians would be so attached to food, but they're marvelously disciplined. Some of the men in my class lost 60 to 70 Ibs."

With the decline of Schwarzwdlder Kirschtorte, sauce bearnaise and fettuccine alia crema, the Continent is now the world's biggest -so to speak -growth area for New York-based Weight Watchers' International. "Concern with losing weight is now as important in Europe as it is in the U.S.," says W.W. Founder Jean Nidetch. "You don't see fat people on the Champs-Elysees. But they are there, lurking at home. And they are miserable."

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