VOA慢速英语: 西方的饮食习惯对身体健康、对环境不利

Western Diet Bad for Human Health, Environment
西方饮食对身体健康、对环境不利
From VOA Learning English, this is the Health Report.
这里是美国之音慢速英语的健康报道。
The spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and for the environment. Those findings come from a new report in the journal Nature.
世界风靡的西方饮食习惯对人身体健康、对环境不利。这些发现源自于一本《自然》杂志的最新报道。
There are ways to solve this diet-health-environment problem. But they will require a change in eating habits. And what we eat can be a product of culture, personal taste, price and ease.
有一些方法能够解决这个饮食——健康——环境的问题。但是人们需要改变饮食习惯。我们吃的东西是一种文化、个人的品味、一种价格和放松方式的产物。
David Tilman is a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. In the study, he examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how diet affected health.
大卫·蒂尔曼是明尼苏达大学生态学的教授。在研究中，他考察了来自100个国家的人的饮食习惯，以及饮食如何影响他们的健康。
Mr. Tilman noted a movement beginning in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized, population increased and earnings rose. More people began to adopt what has been called the Western diet.
蒂尔曼指出20世纪60年代就开始一项运动。他发现随着工业化程度加深、人口增长和收入增加。越来越多的人开始采用西方的饮食方式。
The Western diet is high in refined, or processed, sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter -- and sicker.
西方的饮食中富含精炼物或者加工的糖、脂肪、油和肉。吃这些食物，人们开始变胖，更容易生病。
“The excess, let us say, in the 15 richest nations of the world, right now is on the order of about 400 or 500 extra calories a day that are eaten beyond what people need, and that leads people to gain weight.”
“世界上最富有的15个国家，每天过度摄入400或500卡路里，远远超过人体所需，这就会导致人们变胖。”
David Tillman says overweight people are at greater risk for non-infectious diseases like diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
大卫·提尔曼认为过度肥胖的人群很容易得糖尿病、心脏病和一些癌症等非感染性疾病。
“Diabetes is shooting to very high rates in the United States and across Europe. Heart disease is a major cause of mortality in the Western countries. Unfortunately when people become industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these same health impacts, and in some cases if you are Asian, you have them more severely than even happens in the West.”
“糖尿病在美国和欧洲各国都有很高发病率。在西方国家心脏病是引发死亡率的主要原因。遗憾的是，随着工业化进程的发展，如果人们继续沿用这种西方人的饮食习惯，他们会面对相同的健康问题；假如你是亚洲人，那采用西方饮食习惯产生的问题比西方国家的问题更严重。”
China, he says, is an example where the number of diabetes cases has jumped.
他说中国就是糖尿病人数跳跃式增长的一个例子。
“... from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population having diabetes as they began to industrialize over a 20-year period. And that has not leveled off yet. That is still going up. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on, just nation after nation.”
“过去20多年里，随着工业化的发展，患糖尿病的人数所占比例从不到1%到10%。而且这个增长比例还没有趋向平稳。患病人数在继续上升。全球都存在这种情况，墨西哥、尼日利亚、等一个接着一个国家陆续出现类似问题。”
And, a diet bad for human beings, it seems, is also bad for the environment. As the world’s population grows, experts say more forests and tropical areas will become farmland for crops or grasslands for grazing cattle. These areas will be needed to meet the increasing demand for food.
一种饮食习惯对人体健康有害，而且对环境也有害。随着世界人口的增长，专家称越来越多的森林和热带地区会变成农田，用来种植农田或者变成草场用来畜牧。这些土地需要用来满足人口增长对食物的需求。
“We are likely to have more greenhouse gas released in the future from agriculture because of this dietary shift than all the greenhouse gas that right now comes out of all the cars, and all of the airplanes, boats and ships, all forms of transportation. So our change in diet is likely to be worse for the world for climate warming than all the transportation sources we use right now.”
“因为饮食的变化，未来农业有可能会释放更多的温室气体；而如今的温室气体来自汽车尾气、飞机、各类船只等各种交通运输工具的尾气。因此，饮食习惯的变化对全球来说更糟糕。由于现在交通工具使用导致的全球变暖会更加严重。”
Mr. Tilman calls the link between diet, the environment and human health, “a trilemma.” This is a play on the word “dilemma” -- a problem offering a difficult choice. He says one possible solution is leaving the Western diet behind.
提尔曼把饮食、环境和人类健康之间的练习称为“三元悖论”。这是对“进退维谷”这个词的进一步扩展。“进退维谷”是指一个很艰难的选择。他说一种可行的解决办法是把西方的饮食习惯丢在一边。
I’m Anna Matteo.
我是安娜·马特奥。
VOA’s Rosanne Skirble reported this story from Washington, D.C. Anna Matteo wrote it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
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Words in This Story
graze ­– v. (of cattle, sheep, etc...) eat grass in a field
dilemma – n. a situation in which you have to make a difficult choice