科学美国人60秒 SSS 慢慢吃 不着急哦（在线收听）

Eat Slowly and Breathe Smoothly to Enhance Taste 慢慢吃 不着急哦

Ever lose your ability to taste during a cold, because your nose is stuffed up? That’s because the nose is intimately involved with taste. When you chew, volatile flavor compounds from the food get lofted toward the back of your mouth. And when you exhale you carry some of those flavor compounds up into your nasal cavity, where they hit olfactory receptors.

有没有过这样的经历?感冒时，因为鼻子阻塞，品尝起东西来，索然无味?那是因为鼻子和味觉有着紧密的联系。当你在咀嚼食物时，食物中蕴含的芬香化合物落在嘴中。在吸气时，一些芬香的气味就会进入你的鼻腔，刺激嗅觉受体。

"As children we basically learn, the first lesson of table manners is to keep the mouth closed while chewing, and you also want to breathe smoothly." Rui Ni, a mechanical engineer at Penn State. "I think not only because it's courteous, but you can also smell the food much better if you breathe smoothly."

当在孩提时代，我们实际上学到的，餐桌礼仪的第一课就是，在吃食物的时候，嘴巴紧闭，同时呼吸平缓。瑞倪是宾夕法尼亚州立大学的机械工程师。他说到：“我认为那样做不仅仅是因为礼貌，同时，呼吸平缓，可以更好的闻到食物的味道。”

The backdoor by which smell contributes to taste is called "retronasal olfaction." And it turns out our airways are exquisitely tuned to enhance that effect.

嗅觉对味觉的秘密通道，我们称之为“鼻后嗅觉”。结果表明，呼吸道通过精美地调节来增强这种效果。

Ni and his colleagues 3D-printed a model of a woman's airway, using a CT scan as a template. To track airflow, they laced water with fluorescent particles and pumped it through the apparatus, filming the results. They found that when you breathe in, that inward airflow actually forms a curtain at the back of your mouth, blocking food particles from getting into the lungs--a good thing. And when you exhale, air swirls through that cavity in the back of the mouth, sweeping up those volatile particles and delivering them right to the nasal cavity, where you can smell them. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

倪瑞和自己的同事利用3D打印技术模拟了女性的呼吸道，使用CT扫描作为模板。为了跟踪气流，他们在水内混合荧光粒子，并利用装置抽取水，然后拍摄记录结果。倪瑞他们发现，人体在吸气时，向内的气流实际上会在口腔内后部形成遮蔽，阻止食物粒子进入肺部——这是好事。当人体在呼气时，气体在口腔后部形成漩涡，清扫那些有气味的食物颗粒，将他们送入鼻腔，这样你就能闻到食物的味道。该研究结果发表在《美国国家科学学院院刊》杂志上。

There is a way to derail this well-tuned system: the effect's ruined if you're really huffing and puffing. Meaning if you're wolfing down your food, gasping for air, that turbulent breathing actually delivers more of those food molecules into your lungs and less up into the nasal cavity. In other words, your mother was right all along: keep your mouth shut and don’t bolt your food. It’ll cut the chances of choking, and enhance the taste of the meal.

有一种方法还可以破坏这样调节系统：如果你暴怒时，就会摧毁这种效果。即如果你吃食物时狼吞虎咽同时大口大口地喘着粗气，那么呼吸紊乱会将更多的食物分子送进肺中，而只有少量的食物颗粒会进入鼻腔。换而言之，妈妈说的是对的：吃饭时要闭嘴慢嚼、不要狼吞虎咽。这样会减少窒息的可能性，提高食物的味道。