科学美国人60秒 SSS 剩饭剩菜是食物浪费问题

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。

When restaurants first shut down early in the pandemic, Americans raided grocery stores.

餐厅在新冠疫情初期首次关闭时，美国人突袭了杂货店。

They started cooking more at home—and, presumably, generating more leftovers².

他们开始更多地在家里做饭，这可能会产生更多的剩饭剩菜。

Those leftovers can be a convenient future meal—but they've also got a dark side.

这些剩饭剩菜可以成为未来方便的一餐，但它们也有不好的一面。

"There's a tendency that if you put an item on a plate that's a leftover¹, there's a higher probability that you're not going to fully³ consume that item.

“有一种趋势是，如果你将剩菜放在盘子里，那你很有可能不会把它吃完。

And so it's probably going to go to waste."

因此剩菜可能会被浪费掉。”

Brian Roe⁴, an applied⁵ economist⁶ at the Ohio State University.

俄亥俄州立大学的应用经济学家布莱恩·罗伊说到。

He and his colleagues recently studied leftovers and food waste by tracking the eating habits of 18 men and women in Baton⁷ Rouge⁸, La.

他和同事最近通过追踪路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日18名男女的饮食习惯，研究了剩饭剩菜和食物浪费。

The participants tracked what they ate using an iPhone app.

参与者使用iPhone应用程序追踪他们吃了什么。

And during the weeklong study, the study subjects collectively piled 1,200 different foods on their plates.

在为期一周的研究中，研究对象在盘子里堆积了1200种不同的食物。

After analyzing⁹ what got eaten, saved or thrown away,

在分析参与者吃掉、保存和扔掉的东西后，

the researchers found that leftovers were more likely to be picked at and not fully eaten—a finding we can all probably identify with.

研究人员发现，剩饭剩菜更有可能只被吃一点，而不是完全吃掉——这是我们都可能认同的发现。

But they also observed that leftovers—perhaps due to being older and less fresh—directed diners' attention to the other, more novel items on their plate,

但他们也观察到，剩饭剩菜——可能是因为时间较长和不太新鲜——导致用餐者的注意力转向盘子里其他更新的食物上，

which brings up an interesting possible strategy to get people to eat their veggies.

这就提出了一个有趣的可能策略，让人们吃蔬菜。

"I guess if you have an item that you don't normally eat as much of, and you're trying to get people to eat their peas,

“我想，如果你有平时不常吃的食物，你试图让人们吃豌豆，

perhaps surrounding it with leftovers is a way to make them focus on the newest item on the plate."

也许在它周围放一些剩菜可以让他们专注于盘子里最新的食物。”

The findings are in the journal PLOS ONE.

研究结果发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》期刊上。

Overall, Roe says one bigger lesson emerged on how to avoid scraping food into the trash.

罗伊表示，总的来说，关于如何避免将食物扔进垃圾桶，出现了一个更大的教训。

"For us, the real take-home here was: all else equal, choose a smaller meal, and you're less likely to generate leftovers.

“对我们来说，真正的收获是：在其他条件相同的情况下，选择更少的食物，这样就不太可能产生剩饭了。

And that's a good thing because leftovers, all else equal, tend to be wasted more often."

这是件好事，因为在其他条件相同的情况下，剩饭剩菜往往更容易被浪费。”

Not that Roe doesn't have aspirational¹⁰ Tupperware sitting around.

并不是说罗伊没有理想的特百惠保鲜盒。

"I'm guilty of this myself: we have things left over from last Thanksgiving still sitting in our freezer.

“我自己也对此感到内疚：我们的冰箱里还有去年感恩节的剩饭剩菜。

And I know people who've moved with frozen items before—without ever getting around to eating them."

我知道有些人曾带着冷冻食品搬家，却从未抽出时间吃掉这些食物。”

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。

1 leftover   

n.剩货，残留物，剩饭；adj.残余的

参考例句：

• These narrow roads are a leftover from the days of horse-drawn carriages.这些小道是从马车时代沿用下来的。
• Wonder if that bakery lets us take leftover home.不知道那家糕饼店会不会让我们把卖剩的带回家。

2 leftovers   

n.剩余物，残留物，剩菜

参考例句：

• He can do miracles with a few kitchen leftovers.他能用厨房里几样剩饭做出一顿美餐。
• She made supper from leftovers she had thrown together.她用吃剩的食物拼凑成一顿晚饭。

3 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

4 roe   

n.鱼卵；獐鹿

参考例句：

• We will serve smoked cod's roe at the dinner.宴会上我们将上一道熏鳕鱼子。
• I'll scramble some eggs with roe?我用鱼籽炒几个鸡蛋好吗？

5 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

6 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

7 baton   

n.乐队用指挥杖

参考例句：

• With the baton the conductor was beating time.乐队指挥用指挥棒打拍子。
• The conductor waved his baton,and the band started up.指挥挥动指挥棒，乐队开始演奏起来。

8 rouge   

n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红

参考例句：

• Women put rouge on their cheeks to make their faces pretty.女人往面颊上涂胭脂，使脸更漂亮。
• She didn't need any powder or lip rouge to make her pretty.她天生漂亮，不需要任何脂粉唇膏打扮自己。

9 analyzing   

v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析

参考例句：

• Analyzing the date of some socialist countries presents even greater problem s. 分析某些社会主义国家的统计数据，暴露出的问题甚至更大。 来自辞典例句
• He undoubtedly was not far off the mark in analyzing its predictions. 当然，他对其预测所作的分析倒也八九不离十。 来自辞典例句

10 aspirational   

志同的，有抱负的

参考例句：

• Most of the images that bombard us all are aspirational. 轰击的图像，我们都期望最大。
• Analysts said self-help and aspirational reading could explain India's high figures. 分析师们指出，自助读书、热爱读书是印度人均读书时间超过别的国家的主要原因。