It’s funny you should say this! My dad just got back from spending a month in Italy, and he’s been saying the exact same thing. Here in the US, he has digestion problems and usually eats only one meal a day (a smallish lunch at 2 pm) because he feels stuffed to the gills if he eats in the evening; in Italy, he was eating 3 big meals a day with late dinners (and meals made of pasta and meat…heavy things) and never felt uncomfortably full. He guessed it was the lack of fillers and preservatives in the Italian food that kept him from feeling bloated.
My family and I were in Italy a few Christmases ago and had Christmas dinner at a good restaurant – seven (or more) courses spread over four hours – and we didn’t feel gross afterwards, either. Some of that was probably due to the fact that we shared a communal plate and thus had only a small portion of each course, but I thought that there might also be something about the order in which we ate which types of food that would facilitate digestion. (I figured that with centuries to perfect their cuisine, the Italians would have the digestive arts down to a science. )
Ok, I recently moved to Japan, and I’m definitely gaining weight like no other.
Before, I was a trim 5’4", 100 lbs (163 cm, 45 kg). In the US, I don’t walk around all that much, since I live in LA and the SF Bay Area where I have to drive everywhere. However, I have pretty good portion control because I think the everyday food in America is “so-so”… just okay. Here, it is the other way around. I am literally on my feet all day and getting a pretty good workout, but the food is too delicious, and you can obtain a lot of yummy, inexpensive snacks/meals easily. Not everything is served in small portions as you might imagine; some things are, but some things are definitely as big as American portions or as dense in calories. I think as the novelty wears off, I’d get back to my normal weight. But for now, definitely gaining.
More anecdotes! I lost weight while in Belgium for a year; other than walking more and smaller restaurant portions, I also had a very hard time pronouncing the extremely-Flemish name of the street I lived on, and after a couple of complicated and embarrassing attempts quickly gave up on getting a pizza delivered, which for us was a significant lifestyle change.
I lost weight living in Israel and India. I gained weight living in Bulgaria. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reasons. In Israel, I think it had to do with the Middle Eastern diet being pretty healthful. In India, I just ate a lot less because there weren’t many restaurants in my neighborhood and I didn’t have any means to prepare food at home. In Bulgaria, I don’t know, exactly. I lived with a host family at first, and I gained LOADS of weight living with them. I lost most of it upon going to live on my own, but not as much as I thought I would. I think it might have had to do with boredom and not really having any place to walk to. (In Israel and India, I lived in large cities and had actual stuff to do. In Bulgaria, I lived in a village.) Also, I loved vafli and Tutku.
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