My Letter to The New York Times

I’m a New Yorker working in Beijing at a medical research company; I edit reports researched and prepared by Chinese scientists. The other day I read an article in the Science Times about calorie reduced diets, and how, simply by eating 30% fewer calories, lab animals live longer healthier lives, and are more active and resistant to disease. Fascinated, I turned to the two researchers nearest me and showed them what I’d found. "Look at this", I told them in my poor Chinese, "check out the research these American scientists are doing". After reading the article, they told me, nonplussed, "that’s not research". I thought my Chinese was off (it frequently is) and repeated everything in English. They shrugged it off and told me, quite simply, that there’s an old saying in China: eat ’til you’re 70% full and dress ’til you’re 70% warm. In China, they assured me, people had known about this for thousands of years. I would’ve chalked it up to just another bit of folksy wisdom, except for the fact that the figures (30% fewer calories and 70% full) are exactly the same.