Back pain and swollen feet bringing you down? That bloated feeling making you want to jump out of your skin? Make like the French, and have a vodka tonic, or even a couple of sérieux (roughly translated as, “one serious beer.”) According to a new study, 52 percent of French women consistently hit the bottle while pregnant. I knew I was a French major for a reason!

I know what you’re thinking: those French and their hedonistic ways. Well, in this case, the majority of tipsy pregnant mademoiselles simply didn’t know that drinking alcohol presents a health risk to their babies. And we’re not just talking an aperitif before dinner.

Here it gets a bit disturbing: Of the 837 pregnant women interviewed, 13.7 percent had at least one binge drinking episode, consuming five or more drinks, during their pregnancy. (Compare this to American women, of whom only 12 percent consume the medically approved daily drink while pregnant.) Tragically, two of the women in the study gave birth to babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. Let’s hope this study serves as a wakeup call to the French that at least one American dietary obsession just makes sense.

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