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YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN, BUT DON'T TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL

Researchers in the US, through years of careful study, have made the very heavy discovery that obesity is due to the size of the portions served in US homes schools and restaurants, though why they had to do so much research to find that out is beyond me. All they had to do was go to a restaurant, recall their school days, check out their own waistlines, stroll around a supermarket, or simply leave the lab and go home for dinner. As a last resort they could have called me long distance and saved millions in research costs.

Here in Japan, traditional mealtime portions of the various food components would together fill one American soup bowl, comprising no meat, no dairy, lots of vegetables, grains, beans, tofu, miso and other delicious enzyme-rich foods, eaten with the proviso: Stay hungry. When I visit the States, "the land of the bucket of Coke", my recollection of meal size is always shockingly smaller than the actual portions I am served. In a Seattle diner (they had great pies there) where on my last trip I had a nostalgia breakfast (scrambled eggs, home fries, ham and toast with coffee refills), the plate was half-a-yard wide, with the food falling off the edges. Like a sort of living museum exhibit I ate it all, no problem.

In Japan (where I drink no coffee) that quantity would feed me for at least two days. At no US restaurant I visited were there ever portions small enough to enable me to retain my Japanese dietary compass. Even Japanese restaurants! And in the US' truly very supermarkets, the snack aisles resemble airport wings, where for example one can buy industrial-sized bags of Oreos that must be carried under one arm, and have to be eaten quickly once opened (as compared with Japan where the biggest Oreo bag contains perhaps 16 cookies, individually packaged in pairs within, so as to stretch out over weeks, if necessary).

In less than a month in the US I gained ten pounds of nostalgia, and upon my return to Japan had to restore my dietary compass to my natural settings. So although this may all be surprising news to those wide researchers, it's no news at all to long-term American expats.