With Tuesday being the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, The Clanton Advertiser’s news staff naturally spent some time Monday discussing what we could do to celebrate.

We’re eating at a local Mexican restaurant, but my insistence on margaritas, sombreros and siestas afterward was denied. It would have been fun to act like a stereotypical Mexican person for a day, but would a stereotypical person from another country be more fun?

I was considering the possibilities when I came across the results of a new study, and it turns out that the French have us all beat.

The study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the French spend more time sleeping and eating than anyone else among the world’s wealthy nations. French people sleep an average of nine hours each night, more than an hour longer than Japanese and Korean people, who sleep the least. The United States was close behind, with its average citizen sleeping 8 1/2-hours a night (I must not be average).

The French also spend more than two hours a day eating, almost twice as long as the average Mexican. I love me some quesadillas, but who wouldn’t like to take a little longer to enjoy meals—and then take a long nap?

Maybe the French have it all figured out, after all.