食品行业——永远的大赢家

Peter Nowak

The current obesity epidemic may have escalated in the last 30 years but body-shaping, dieting and the fear of fat all have a long and wretched history.2. epidemic:（坏事的）陡增，泛滥；escalate: （使）变得更糟，（使）变得更严重；wretched: 令人苦恼的，讨厌的。The ideal body has always been revered3. revere: 尊崇，崇敬。in the arts, medicine, politics and philosophy, and that ideal has changed over time.

It has swung like a pendulum from the 16th century, when women (and some men) squeezed themselves into metal and bone corsets that restricted movement and risked crushing internal organs, to the 18th century, when figures were free in flimsy empireline shifts.4. 情况一直在变。16世纪，女性（及部分男性）冒着内脏被压坏的风险，拼命把自己塞进用金属和骨头制成的紧身褡里，行动十分不便；可到了18世纪，人们又改穿宽松轻薄的高腰服饰了。swing like a pendulum:（观点）摇摆不定，pendulum指钟摆；squeeze: 挤进，挤入；corset:（尤指旧时女子用来束腰以显得苗条的）紧身褡；crush: 压伤，压坏； flimsy: 轻薄的；empire-line: 帝国线，即高腰线，指将服装收腰的线条移到胸围底处。In the 19th century, Victorian women were trussed up again into that period’s desirably fecund shape, all bustles and breasts.5. truss up: 捆，绑；desirably: 令人向往地，合意地；fecund:多产的，肥沃的，文中指丰满的；bustle:（旧时女裙后部的）撑架，衬垫；breast: 胸部。Then, after the First World War, when women had rejoined the workforce and secured the vote, the straight-up-and-down flapper figure was all the rage, and curves were bound and flattened.6. 后来一战告终，女性重新成为劳动力，拥有选举权，平板式身材开始风靡，身体曲线便被束住，不再凸显。workforce:劳动人口，劳动力； flapper:〈口〉（20世纪20年代后期穿短裙、留短发、思想被认为十分现代的）时髦女子；be all the rage: 时髦，非常流行；bind: 束，围裹； flatten: 使变平。

一直以来，完美身材都备受推崇。可时代不同，完美身材的标准也不同。16世纪推崇细腰，女人们把自己塞进紧身褡；18世纪，女人们又穿起宽松的高腰裙来；19世纪的女人又以丰满为美；一战后，女人们纷纷裹紧自己，不露曲线；二战后，丰乳肥臀又成新潮……如今，人们又不择手段地努力瘦身。我们想要丰满，食品行业就推出高热量产品，而当肥胖渐成问题，食品行业又推出瘦身产品，它似乎是永远的赢家……

In the 1920s, the medical profession began to worry that the new “slimming mania” might be dangerous, and it sent the press into a frenzy: women with boyish figures could turn into lesbians, they screamed, society will wither—all this as they sold advertising space for obesity cures, scales,corsets and diet devices.7. mania: 癖好，狂热；press: 报刊，新闻业；frenzy:一阵狂热；lesbian: 女同性恋者；wither: 萎缩，消失；scale: 秤。After the Second World War,things changed again and “sweater girls” such as Jayne Mans field and Jane Russell personi fied the new shape,their natural curvaceousness emphasised by pointy Playtex bras and Vanishette roll-ons: rubber was no longer required for the war effort so a new outlet had to be found.8. sweater girl: 穿着紧身上衣突出胸部的女郎；Jayne Mansfield: 简·曼斯菲尔德（1933—1967），美国女影星，20世纪五六十年代好莱坞著名性感女星；Jane Russell: 简·拉塞尔（1921—2011），美国女影星，20世纪四五十年代好莱坞著名性感女星；personify: 是……的化身；curvaceousness:（女子）有曲线美，丰满而匀称；roll-on: 女子弹力紧身胸衣；rubber: 橡胶；outlet: 市场，销路。

Preferred body shapes alter as societies change, and when the women’s liberation movement arrived in the 1960s and 70s, restrictive underwear was chucked out once more.9. 时代社会不同，人们偏爱的身材就不同，20世纪60年代和70年代，妇女解放运动兴起，束身内衣再次被抛弃。chuck out: 驱逐。Now, while many of us seem terri fied of bulges and dimples, many more of us are spilling out of our clothes.10. 现在尽管很多人害怕太胖，但更多的人已经成了肥胖的一员。bulge: 凸出部分，指（身体）发胖的部位；dimple: 浅坑，文中指因肥胖穿衣勒出的凹痕；spill out of clothes: 指因太胖而肉溢出了衣服。It’s a cultural confusion born of con flicting opinions, moral panics,11. be born of: 源于；panic: 恐慌。economics and environment.

The beginnings of mass media in the 19th century, with its nascent celebrity culture, diet adverts and seductive before-and-after images, fed and bred the shame and anxiety that drives body dissatisfaction and dieting.12. nascent: 新生的，新兴的；seductive: 有诱惑力的，吸引人的；breed: 招致，引发。An avalanche of novel eating regimens, slimming foods,lotions, potions, pummelling, mastication and electrical devices hit the hungry market.13. 一时间，市场上涌现出各种新式减肥方法：饮食养生法、减肥食品、瘦身洗液、减肥药、拍打、咀嚼以及各式电子产品。 an avalanche of sth.: 突然出现的大量事物；novel: 新奇的，新颖的；regimen: 养生之道；lotion: 洗液，洗剂；potion:（有特效或魔力的）饮剂；pummelling:（用拳头等）连续击打；mastication: 咀嚼。High colonic irrigations（高位结肠灌洗）and apronectomies（腹壁脂肪切除）were offered in the underworld of medicine, where doctors eagerly exploited women willing to suffer pain and prolonged discomfort,14. underworld: 下层社会，黑社会；prolonged: 持续很久的，长期的；discomfort: 不舒服，不适。and to spend the last of their own money on having their excess fat cut away. These unscrupulous surgeons believed their patients had a “mental twist”—but that didn’t stop them pro fiting from their insecurities.15. 这些黑心医生觉得那些病人肯定“心理扭曲”—— 但这并不能阻止他们利用病人的不安全感并从中牟利。unscrupulous: 不讲道德的，不择手段的。This was happening over 100 years ago, yet it remains big business today.

简·拉塞尔

In the early 20th century you could buy tape worm16. tape worm: 绦虫。pills and, the advertisement promised,“Eat, eat, eat” before taking another pill to kill off the worm. You could swallow laxative tablets（泻药）, smoke cigarettes (secretly) laced with appetite suppressants（厌食剂）, bathe in Every Woman’s Flesh Reducer, wear skin-macerating rubber knickers, suffer an enema（灌肠剂）or be massaged until your fat oozed through your pores like “mashed potato through a colander”.17. be laced with: 被掺入……；macerate: 使消瘦；knickers:女用内裤，短衬裤；massage: 按摩，推拿；ooze: 渗出，冒出；pore:（皮肤上的）毛孔；mashed potato:土豆泥；colander:（过滤或淘洗食物用的）滤器，漏勺。Over-the-counter18. over-the-counter:（药）非处方的。diet drugs were big news.Some were useless, containing Epsom salts（泻盐）,sugar and soap（脂肪酸盐）, but a few were downright dangerous, with poisonous ingredients to speed up your metabolism（新陈代谢）.19. downright: 完全地，彻底地；poisonous: 有毒的；ingredient: 组成成分。There were new synthetic hormones（合成激素）and, disastrously,dinitrophenol（二硝基酚）, a carcinogenic dying agent used in First World War explosives and now,20. carcinogenic: 致癌的；agent: 作用剂；explosive: 爆炸物，炸药。tragically,back in the news again.

The consensus21. consensus: 一致意见，共识。now is that increasing obesity rates are likely to be the result of a changing food environment—where, what and how much people choose to eat and how much they move. The food industry has engineered products to appeal to our biological cravings for substances that increase our risk of major chronic diseases: calorie-dense and nutrient-poor.22. 食品产业迎合我们的饮食欲望，推出一系列“热量过高、营养价值极低”的食品，我们患上慢性疾病的几率也因此增大。engineer: 策划，谋划；appeal to: 吸引（某人），引起（某人）的兴趣；craving: 渴望，渴求；chronic:（疾病）慢性的；nutrient: 养分，营养物。And it is all increasingly available, cheaply, and attractively packaged.

The food environment is radically23. radically: 根本地，彻底地。different from what it was just a generation ago. Like the tobacco and alcohol industries, many food and drink companies put all the emphasis on individual responsibility so that the health-related costs of their products are dumped24. dump: 把（工作）推卸给（某人）。straight back on to the tax-paying consumers. The diet industry that so fostered our obsession with fat will now be the one to pro fit from the obesity epidemic.25. 食品行业让我们迷恋上高热量食品，导致肥胖问题越来越严重，现在，他们又开始利用我们的肥胖问题牟取利益。foster: 助长，培养；obsession: 着魔，迷恋。