学会来者不拒

Ｊｅｆｆｒｅｙ　Ｓｔｅｉｎｇａｒｔｅｎ

"I wanted to fall upon the cook," wrote Edmondo de Amicis, a 19th-century traveler. "In an instant I understood perfectly how a race who ate such food must necessarily believe in another God and hold essentially different views of human life from our own... There was a suggestion of soap, wax, pomatum, of unguents, dyes, cosmetics; of everything, in short, most unsuited to enter a human mouth."

“我真想揍那个厨师”，19世纪的旅行家埃得蒙多•德•亚米契斯写道。“我立即全然理解了为什么吃这种食物的种族必须得信仰另一个上帝，以及对人生持有一种根本不同于我们的观点……这些食物的味道像肥皂、蜡、润发油、软膏、染料、化妆品，总之什么都有，大多数都难以入口。”

Though de Amicis was describing his feelings about Moroccan cuisine, this is precisely how I felt about desserts in Indian restaurants until 1989, the year that I was appointed food critic of Vogue magazine. As I contemplated the heavy responsibilities of my new post, I realized how inadequate I was to the honor, for I, like everybody I knew, suffered from a set of strong and arbitrary likes and dislikes regarding food. I feared that I was no better than an art critic who becomes nauseated by the color yellow, or suffers from red-green color blindness.

尽管德•亚米契斯描述的是他对摩洛哥美食的体会，但这与我在1989年被聘为时尚杂志《Vogue》的美食评论家之前对印度餐馆的甜点的体会一个样。当我预想新工作责任重大的时候，我意识到自己真的难以胜任，因为我，与我知道的每个人一样，就食物有很多强烈而又不理性的喜爱与厌恶之情。我担心自己无异于因黄颜色感到恶心或是红绿不分的色盲艺术评论家。

It went even deeper than that. Humans were designed to be omnivores. Blessed with all-purpose dentition and digestive systems, we are ready for anything. Unlike those of most other animals, our genes do not tell us what foods we should find tasty or repulsive. We enter the world with a yen for sweets and an aversion to bitterness. (Newborns, it has recently been discovered, can even distinguish among glucose, fructose, lactose, and sucrose - but little else.) After four months, we develop an innate fondness for salt. And that's about it.

原因不仅仅如此。人类生来本不偏食。托多功能牙齿和消化系统的福，我们什么都可以吃。与大多数其它动物不一样，我们的基因不会告诉我们哪些食物是美味的，哪些是恶心的。但我们是带着对甜味的渴望与对苦味的厌恶来到世上。（最近发现，新生儿居然能够区分葡萄糖、果糖、乳糖和蔗糖——但其它的就无能为力了。）长到四个月后，我们便由衷地喜爱咸味。就是这样。

The nifty thing about being omnivores is that we can take nourishment from an endless variety of sources and easily adapt to a changing food world - crop failures, droughts, herd migrations, restaurant closings, and the like. Cows will starve in a steakhouse and wolves in a salad bar, but not we.

不偏食者的好处是我们可以吸收各种食物的营养，很容易适应不断发生变化的食物世界——作物歉收、干旱、牛群迁徙、饭店关门等等。母牛在牛排餐厅会饿死，狼在沙拉吧也会饿死，但是我们不会。

The tricky part about being omnivorous is that we are always in danger of poisoning ourselves. That is why the most potent cause of food aversions is an attack of nausea after eating. Just one illness will do the trick - even if the food we ate did not actually cause the problem, and even if we know it didn't. Hives or rashes may make us rationally avoid a given food in the future, but only a stomachache will result in a lasting, irrational, lifelong sense of disgust. Otherwise, psychologists know very little about the host of powerful likes and dislikes - let's lump them all under the term "food phobias" - that children carry into adulthood.

对于不偏食的人来说严峻的一面是，我们经常会有中毒的危险。这就是为什么导致食物厌恶情绪的最大因素是吃了食物之后感到的反胃恶心。只要出现一次症状便会成功地让我们厌恶它们——即使实际上并不是我们吃下的食物造成的后果，或即使我们知道它未曾导致这样的后果。荨麻疹或皮疹可能使我们今后理性地避开某些食物，但是一次胃痛便会给我们留下持久的、不理性的、终身的厌恶感。若不是这个道理，心理学家就不太理解许多强烈的喜爱与厌恶等情感——让我们统统将它们归纳为“食物恐惧”——孩子们成年后，依然没有摆脱它们。

By shutting ourselves off from the bounties of nature, we become failed omnivores. We let the omnivore team down.

拒绝了大自然的慷慨资源，我们便是失败的不偏食者。我们让不偏食者群体失望了。

People should be ashamed of the irrational food phobias that keep them from sharing food with each other. Instead, they have become proud and arrogant and aggressively misinformed. But not me. When I donned the heavy mantle of food critic, I sketched out a six-step program to rid myself of all puissant and crippling likes and dislikes.

人们本应对阻碍他们互相分享食物的不理性的食物恐惧症感到惭愧。相反，他们变得骄傲、自大，还固执地给别人强加错误的信息。但我不会这样。当我披上美食评论家厚重的外衣时，我草拟了一份六步计划来使自己摆脱所有强烈与具有阻碍性的喜爱与厌恶。

Step one was to list my food phobias, which ranged from mild to psychotic. They included dill, kimchi (the national pickle of Korea), swordfish, miso, mocha, chutney, raw sea urchins, cinnamon, California chardonnay, falafel (those hard, dry, fried little balls of chickpea flour unaccountably enjoyed in Middle Eastern countries), chickpeas generally, cranberries, kidneys, okra, millet, coffee ice cream, refried beans, and most forms of yogurt.

第一步是列出我厌恶的食物，指从略微厌恶到极度讨厌的。包括小茴香、泡菜（韩国招牌泡菜）、箭鱼、日本豆面酱、摩卡、酸辣酱、生海胆、桂皮、加州霞多丽、香炸豆丸（那些又硬又干、莫名地受到中东国家人们的喜爱的鹰嘴豆口味油炸面团小丸子）、普通的鹰嘴豆、蔓越莓、动物肾脏、黄秋葵、黍、咖啡冰激凌、炸豆泥以及大多数酸奶食品。

I was also convinced that Greek cuisine was an oxymoron. Nations are like people. Some are good at cooking, while others have a talent for music or baseball or manufacturing VCRs. The Greeks are really good at both pre-Socratic philosophy and white sculpture. They have not been good cooks since the fifth century B.C., when Siracusa in Sicily was the gastronomic capital of the world. Typical of the Greeks' modern cuisine are feta cheese and retsina wine. Any country that pickles its national cheese in brine and adulterates its national wine with pine pitch should order dinner at the local Chinese place and save its energies for other things. The British go to Greece for the food, which says volumes to me. You would probably think twice before buying a Russian or Algerian television set. I had thought for 10 years before buying my last Greek meal.

我还深信希腊美食是一个矛盾。国家就像人一样。有些善于烹饪，而有些则具有音乐或橄榄球或制造录像机的天赋。希腊确实既擅长前苏格拉底哲学又擅长白色雕塑。自公元前5世纪起他们就不擅长烹饪，当时西西里岛的锡拉库扎是世界的美食之都。具有代表性的希腊现代美食是菲达奶酪和松香味希腊葡萄酒。任何将本国奶酪腌泡在卤水中以及将本国葡萄酒与松焦油沥青掺和在一起的国家都应该在当地的华人餐馆点餐，以便节省精力干别的事情。英国人前往希腊品尝食物，这充分说明英国人的品味很差，希腊菜更是糟糕透顶。在购买一台俄罗斯或阿尔及利亚产的电视机之前，你得三思。上次吃希腊菜之前，我考虑了十年。

This had to stop.

这些都必须结束。

Exposure was the only answer. Researchers have found that eating moderate amounts of a novel or hated food at moderate intervals is nearly guaranteed to work. The reason is that omnivores are born with neophobia, a fear of new foods that accompanies our biological need to explore for them - an ambivalence that protects us from unbridled banqueting. Most parents give up trying out novel foods on their weanlings after two or three attempts, and then complain to the pediatrician; this may be the most frequent cause of finicky eaters, of omnivores manqués. Most babies will accept nearly anything after eight or 10 tries.

解决问题的唯一办法是接触你厌恶的食物。研究人员发现定期定量地吃一种新式或讨厌的食物相当有效。因为杂食者天生就有新奇恐惧症，害怕新奇的食物，而自身的生理需求又驱使我们尝试新食物，这种矛盾使我们不敢无节制地大吃大喝。大多数家长尝试了两到三次之后便放弃给刚断奶的孩子喂新的食物，然后便向儿科医师抱怨，这也许就是导致挑食者形成及杂食者稀缺最常见的原因。其实大多数婴儿在尝试八到十次后，任何食物他们都会接受。

I immediately made eight or 10 reservations at Korean restaurants, purchased eight or 10 anchovies, searched the Zagat guide for eight or 10 restaurants with the names "Parthenon" or "Olympia" (which I believe are required by statute for Greek restaurants), and brought a pot of water to the boil for cooking eight or 10 chickpeas.

我立即在一些韩国餐馆安排了八到十个预约，买了八或十条凤尾鱼，在《Zagat》餐饮指南杂志中搜寻了八到十家名叫“帕台农神庙”或“奥林匹亚”（这些名字我觉得是法律对希腊餐馆的规定）的餐馆，并为烹煮八到十道鹰嘴豆烧开一壶水。

I dedicated the next six months to this effort, and by the time I had finished, nearly every food aversion (along with every positive preference that had kept me from exploring freely) was gone. Now I yearn for miso and am a noted connoisseur of anchovies. Try to find those packed in salt rather than in oil.

在接下来的六个月里，我专注于这项试验，当我完成了的时候，几乎所有的食物厌恶症（此外还包括所有阻止我自由地探索其它美食的对某些食物的偏爱）都消失了。现在我渴望日本豆面酱，并成为一名知名的凤尾鱼鉴赏家。尝试那些腌在盐里的而不是泡在油里的凤尾鱼。

For my final exam and graduation ceremony. I was in Paris, France - a city that my professional duties frequently compel me to visit. I was trying a nice new restaurant, and when the waiter brought the menu, I found myself in a state unlike any I had ever attained - call it Zen-like if you wish. Everything on the menu, every appetizer, hot and cold, every salad, every fish, every bird, and every meat was terrifically alluring, but none more than any other. I had absolutely no way of choosing. Though blissful at the prospect of eating, I was completely unable to order dinner.

为了测试一下我的努力成果，我当时在法国巴黎——我的职业责任经常迫使我前往的城市。我正尝试一家很不错的新餐馆，当服务员拿来菜单的时候，我发现自己有种从未有过的状态——如果愿意的话你可以称之为类似禅宗的东西。菜单上的所有食物，每道开胃菜，热菜冷盘，每道色拉、鱼、禽和肉都异常诱人，但是它们彼此毫不逊色。我完全无法选择。虽然想象品尝它们的时刻一定很幸福，但我根本决定不了点什么菜。

I would have starved - if my companion had not saved the day by ordering for both of us. I believe I had a composed salad with slivers of foie gras, a perfect sole meunière, and sweetbreads. Everything was delicious.

如果那天不是我的同伴出手相助，分别为我们点菜的话，我可能已经饿死了。我确信我吃了一份碎鹅肝沙拉，一份绝佳的法式黄油炸鱼和法式杂碎。所有的食物都很美味。

Links

1. crippling

cripple的意思是“跛子”，crippling在这里指的是对食物的厌恶或喜爱之情阻碍你尝试新的食物。

2. the British go to Greece for the food

作者是美国人，美国人认为英国人的饮食品味低级，既然英国人为了品尝食物前往希腊，那么希腊的食物一定很糟糕。