大量的食物是由我们流行的零食推动的

大量的食物是由我们流行的零食推动的

Snack companies are doing well these days. The pandemic has brought an unexpected boost to sales of products that, prior to March, had taken a downturn. Bags of chips, boxes of cookies, ice cream, and other sweet and salty prepackaged snacks are suddenly flying off store shelves – and being restocked just as fast by employees who work for the companies that make them, known as "direct store distribution agents."

这些日子零食公司经营得很好。在今年3月之前，流感大流行曾一度低迷，但这次却出乎意料地提振了这些产品的销售。袋装的薯片、盒装的饼干、冰淇淋和其他甜咸的预先包装的零食突然从商店的货架上飞了下来，并且由生产这些零食的公司的员工以“商店直销代理商”的速度重新进货。

Writing for the New York Times, Michael Moss reports that the pandemic has turned our kitchens into one big vending machine. "We may think that we turned a corner on our eating habits with all that sourdough baking we did, but Big Food isn’t about to let us off its hook that easily."

在《纽约时报》的一篇文章中，迈克尔·莫斯报道说，这种流行病已经把我们的厨房变成了一台大型自动售货机。“我们可能认为，我们的饮食习惯因为做了那么多酵母烘焙而出现了转机，但‘大食品’不会那么轻易地让我们摆脱困境。”

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A sales report issued this spring to Wall Street analysts found that the future is rosy for junk food snacks. The CEO of Mondelez International said, "In-home there is more grazing, more continuous eating, and snacking takes up a much bigger role." Not good news for our waistlines...

今年春天华尔街分析师发布的一份销售报告显示，垃圾食品零食的前景一片光明。亿滋国际的首席执行官说:“在家有更多的时间，更多的持续进食，零食占据了更大的角色。”这对我们的腰围来说可不是什么好消息……

What's driving the change?

是什么推动了这种变化?

There are a number of factors, not least of which is the obvious fact that we're all at home a lot more than usual and likely feeling less pressured to eat salad, rather than Oreos. There are strong emotions associated with life in lockdown, and food can be comforting; it creates a sense of normalcy. Apparently there's also surging curiosity about new products: "More than 40 percent of the soaring sales in Fig Newtons and Nutter Butter cookies came from first-time buyers."

有很多因素，其中最明显的一个事实是，我们都比平时在家的时间长，吃沙拉比吃奥利奥的压力更小。在禁闭的生活中会产生强烈的情感，食物可以安慰人;它创造了一种正常的感觉。显然，人们对新产品的好奇心也在飙升:“Fig Newtons和Nutter黄油曲奇销量飙升，其中超过40%来自首次购买者。”

Not mentioned in Moss's article, but certainly experienced by myself, a parent who's working from home like so many others, is the endless struggle to keep children fed throughout the day. Pre-COVID, I'd send them off to school with a fully packed healthy lunch and wouldn't have to worry about food-related demands between 9 am and 4 pm. Now, the requests for snacks come at all hours of the workday, so I can understand why parents would have a sudden urge to stock up on fast, easy-to-distribute snacks.

莫斯的文章中没有提到，作为一个在家工作的父母，我和其他很多人一样，每天都要为孩子们吃饭而无休止地挣扎。在考维德之前，我会给孩子们准备一份完整的健康午餐，这样他们就不用担心早上9点到下午4点之间的食物需求了。现在，零食的需求在工作日的任何时候都有，所以我可以理解为什么父母会突然有一种冲动，去储备快速、易于分发的零食。

Life in lockdown can be profoundly boring at times, so I imagine many people are purchasing special treats as a way to make things feel more exciting at home. I know I do this, buying a single bag of Miss Vickie's Sweet Chili and Sour Cream chips (a.k.a. the greatest flavor ever) every Friday night to eat during a weekly Scrabble game with my husband. We just completed our 16th consecutive week of playing, which means 16 bags of chips that I never would've bought otherwise.

“闭关锁国”的生活有时会非常无聊，所以我想很多人会买一些特别的东西，让家里的东西更刺激。我知道我会这样做，每周五晚上我都会买一袋维姬小姐的甜辣椒酸奶油薯片(也被称为史上最棒的口味)，和我丈夫在每周的拼字游戏中一起吃。我们刚刚完成了连续第16周的比赛，这意味着16袋筹码，否则我是不会买的。

A commenter on Moss's article raised the topic of nostalgia, and how she, too, has found herself buying treats she never usually buys, likely because all of these are associated with her childhood. "I had noticed myself getting nostalgic in the supermarket, but hadn't connected it to a broader trend or to the pandemic." It's an interesting point that could be linked to purchasing trends, too.

一位评论者在莫斯的文章中提到了怀旧的话题，以及她是如何发现自己也会买一些她从不买的东西，可能是因为所有这些都和她的童年有关。“我注意到自己在超市里开始怀旧，但并没有把它和更广泛的趋势或流行病联系起来。”这是一个有趣的观点，也可能与购买趋势有关。

Regardless of why we're doing it, Moss wants people to realize that Big Food will be pulling out all the stops to keep this momentum going. Whether it's through more invasive advertising and engaging social media platforms, fiercer competition for shelf space, expansion into new markets, spinning products as healthier than they are, or presenting us with tricky situations that force us to buy things we don't need (think of the full online shopping cart that requires only an extra $5 to qualify for free shipping), we should prepare to be bombarded.

不管我们为什么要这样做，莫斯希望人们意识到，大型食品将竭尽全力保持这一势头。无论是通过更多侵入性广告和吸引人的社交媒体平台,激烈竞争货架空间,拓展新市场,纺纱产品比他们更健康,或展示我们棘手情况迫使我们去买我们不需要的东西(认为完整的在线购物车只需要一个额外的5美元,免费送货),我们应该准备轰炸。

Food guilt is never a good thing, and there's no point being hard on ourselves for decadent pandemic habits, but the key is not to fall back into those habits permanently. Processed, prepackaged snack foods should remain in the treats-only realm and not become a regular part of our daily diets. The easiest way to do this is not portion control, as the companies love to proclaim ("Take a pause between each bite [of Oreo], check in with yourself, and ask, 'Am I still hungry?'"), but simply not to buy.

对食物感到内疚从来都不是一件好事，而且我们也没有必要为堕落的流行习惯而苛责自己，但关键是不要永远回到那些习惯中去。加工过的、预先包装好的零食应该在治疗范围内，而不应该成为我们日常饮食的一部分。要做到这一点，最简单的方法不是控制分量，就像这些公司喜欢宣称的那样(“每次吃奥利奥的时候停下来，问问自己，‘我还饿吗?’”)，而只是不买。