Thank you. I've been saying this forever, based largely on personal experience living in countries where average portions aren't grotesquely oversize, and where

Thank you. I've been saying this forever, based largely on personal experience living in countries where average portions aren't grotesquely oversize, and where the chemistry of a typical meal is healthier and more natural. I spent the first six years of my life in the USSR, where my formative attitudes about food were formed: received cultural wisdom was that you should be grateful for food and clean up your plate, both as a social grace and out of larger moral considerations. This stayed with me, but unfortunately is a disaster when applied in the US, where everything is enormous. Accordingly, I'm prone to overeat, since almost all eating out in the US is overeating by global standards. I'm not obese per se, but weight control has always been a struggle. On the other hand, I lived in Yerevan, Armenia for nearly two years 2012-2014. Within about half a year of arriving, I lost nearly 30 lbs, eating an average diet and having no exercise regime whatsoever. There was no gym membership and no morning jog. I did nothing special to lose weight, it just happened. The amount of walking involved in everyday life surely helped, but it wasn't extraordinary; the inner centre of Yerevan is small, not on the scale of a European capital. I just ate a lot less, it turns out. It was a fairly rich diet, too, with lots of dough, bread, meat and carbs--just less. Of course, I promptly gained the weight back a few months after returning to the US.