人类正变得越来越高大长寿

Everyone knows that obesity is a major health crisis in the United States and many other countries, but humans aren’t just getting fatter, we’re also getting bigger overall. Humans are getting larger and larger and the average person is now significantly taller than the averages of decades past.

大家都知道，在美国和许多其他国家，肥胖是一个主要的健康危机，但人类不仅在变胖，整体上也在变高大。人类正变得越来越高大，普通人的身高比过去几十年的平均身高要高得多。

On top of that, we eat more and that’s bad news for planet Earth.

除此之外，我们吃得更多了，这对地球来说是个坏消息。

A new study conducted by researchers with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) reveals that the nutritional demands for the human race are steadily climbing and not just because there’s more of us. Larger people need to eat more and as humans get larger, that’s going to put additional strain on food supplies.

挪威科技大学的研究人员进行的一项新研究表明，人类的营养需求正在稳步攀升，这不仅仅是因为人类的数量在不断增加。体型较大的人需要吃更多，而随着人类变高大，这将给食物供应带来额外的压力。

“We studied the effects of two phenomena,” Gibran Vita of NTNU’s Industrial Ecology Programme said in a statement. “One is that people on average have become taller and heavier. The second is that the average population is getting older.”

挪威科技大学工业生态项目的纪伯伦.维塔在一份声明中表示:“我们研究了两种现象的影响。其中一个原因是人们的平均身高和体重都有所增加。第二，平均人口正在变老。”

According to the data, humans are now around one-and-a-half percent taller overall than we were in 1975, as well as 14 percent heavier. Because the human population is living longer, the average age is also over six percent higher than it was in 1975. Crunching the numbers, the scientists figure that this means the average person needs around six percent more food energy than they did back then.

数据显示，人类的整体身高比1975年增加了1.5%，体重也增加了14%。由于人类寿命更长，平均年龄也比1975年高出6%以上。通过分析这些数据，科学家们得出结论，这意味着普通人需要的食物能量要比1975年高出6%左右。

Over that same time frame, overall human food consumption spiked by a whopping 129 percent, with approximately 116 percent of that growth coming from population increases and the other 15 percent stemming from humans being larger on average. Humans are already struggling with maintaining food supplies in many areas of the world, especially developing countries and those issues are only going to get worse as each generation consumes more and more.

在同一时间段内，人类食物的总消费量飙升了129%，其中大约116%的增长来自于人口的增长，另外15%来自于人类平均变高大了。人类已经在努力维持世界许多地区的粮食供应了，特别是发展中国家的粮食供应。随着每一代人消耗得越来越多，这些问题只会变得越来越严重。

The solution? Well, we don’t really have one yet.

有解决方案吗?我们目前还真没有。