在这个依然没有消除饥饿的世界，肥胖却悄然蔓延，成为又一个让人头疼的全球性流行病。人们通常将肥胖问题归结于个人不良的生活方式，但事情的根源也许远非如此……
It’s easy to make the assumption that obesity is an individual problem, having more to do with personal health than with social justice. After all, people make their own decisions about what they put on their plates and how much they put in their mouths.
人们很容易认为，肥胖是个人的问题，主要与个人健康有关，与社会正义没什么瓜葛。毕竟，自己盘子里放什么食物、嘴巴里塞多少东西都是由自己决定的。
But many people are starting to see not only the public health consequences of the obesity epidemic, but also the broader forces that contribute to it.
然而，现在很多人开始看到肥胖流行病给大众健康带来的影响。不仅如此，人们还发现，导致肥胖流行病的因素比人们以为的更广泛。
And “epidemic” isn’t too strong a word for the growing problem of obesity. The numbers in the U.S. are unsettling (使人不安的), with startling increases over the past few decades. But the worst may be yet to come, as billions of people in formerly developing countries are gradually globalized into “fast-food nation” lifestyles.
对于日益严峻的肥胖问题，用“流行病”这个词来形容并不为过。美国肥胖人群的数字令人担忧，在过去几十年里，这一数字增长惊人。然而，最糟糕的局面也许还没到来，因为原先还属于发展中国家的数十亿人在全球化浪潮中也逐渐过上了“快餐国度”的生活方式。
The transition has already begun. According to a recent U.N. report, more than 1 billion people around the world are overweight. Each year excess weight and obesity cause 2.8 million deaths—65 percent of the world’s population now lives in countries where being overweight kills more people than being underweight. And it’s only going to get worse: According to Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. special rapporteur (联合国特别报告员) on the right to food, by 2030 as many as 5.1 million people in poor countries will die each year before the age of 60 from unhealthy diets and diet-related diseases such as diabetes (糖尿病), 1.3 million more than today.
这一转变已经拉开帷幕。据联合国近期的一项报告统计，全世界超重的人口数量已超过十亿。每年有280万人死于超重和肥胖，目前全世界65%的人生活在超重问题严重的国家——在这些国家，体重超标造成的死亡率比体重不足要高。而且，这种态势只会继续恶化：联合国食物权特别报告员(联合国特别报告员，接受联合国人权理事会的管理，主要通过特别的程序执行人权理事会的命令，就人权问题进行调查、监督、建议以及报告等活动。)奥利维尔·德舒特称，到2030年，贫困国家每年将有510万人在60岁之前就死于不健康饮食或与饮食相关的疾病(比如糖尿病)，比现在增加130万人。
The definitions of hunger and malnutrition (营养失调) are changing, and as a result so are the responses—but perhaps not quickly enough.
对饥饿与营养失调的定义正在发生改变，因此，人类的应对措施也在做出相应调整——只是调整得还不够迅速。
In the 1960s and 1970s, the cause of hunger was diagnosed by most officials as primarily a lack of adequate calories, and thus the response was a singular (突出的) focus on increased outputs. But the diagnosis was at best simplistic (简单化的)—even decades ago, in a time of extensive famine, hunger was rooted as much in poverty and powerlessness as in a literal shortage of food.
在20世纪60与70年代，大多数官方人士判定，饥饿产生的主要原因是缺乏足够的卡路里，于是出台了与此对应的举措——单纯关注食品产量的提高。但即便是以最乐观的态度来看，这样的判断也是把问题简单化了——即使是在几十年前饥荒蔓延发生的时期，饥饿产生的根源也不完全在于食物不足，贫穷和无能为力与食物不足一样，也是饥饿产生的根源。
That’s even truer today. The world produces enough food to feed everyone—17 percent more calories per person than 30 years ago, according to the World Hunger Education Service, enough to provide everyone in the world with sufficient nourishment. The main cause of hunger is still poverty (and the economic and political systems that cause poverty), along with war, racism, and, increasingly, the effects of climate change.
今天来看，情况更是如此。目前全世界生产的食物足够养活所有人了。据世界饥饿教育组织统计，现在人均占有的卡路里比30年前增加了17%，足够为世界的每个人提供充分的营养了。但如今，导致饥饿产生的主要原因仍然是贫穷(以及造成贫穷的经济与政治体制)。此外，造成饥饿的原因还包括战争、种族主义以及日益突出的气候变化的影响。
And while undernutrition is still the main hunger issue in the developing world, obesity is more and more being recognized as another form of malnutrition.
尽管发展中国家的饥饿问题仍主要表现为营养不良问题，但人们也越来越意识到，肥胖是营
养失调的另一种表现。
While obesity is undeniably (不可否认地) related to a person’s lifestyle, personal choices around food cannot be separated from the political, social, and economic context. As De Schutter put it, “Our food systems are making people sick ... we must tackle the systemic problems that generate poor nutrition in all its forms.”
不可否认，肥胖与个人的生活方式息息相关，但个人对食物的选择与其所处的政治、社会和经济环境是分不开的。正如德舒特所说：“让人们生病的是我们的食品体制……我们必须解决这些导致各类营养失调症状出现的体制问题。”
Those systemic problems, which result in an overabundance of cheap, over-processed food, include everything from ag policies (such as the promotion, and often subsidizing (资助), of soybeans and cereals—especially corn—over fruits and vegetables) to the marketing of unhealthy foods to children and adults. (U.S. companies spent $8.5 billion advertising food, candy, and beverages (饮料), not even counting alcohol, in 2010.)
这些体制问题导致的结果是过度加工的廉价食品的泛滥。这些问题无所不包，从农业政策(比如对大豆和谷物——尤其是玉米——所给予的优先于水果和蔬菜的大力推广和经常性补贴)，到将不健康食品推销给儿童和成人的市场营销。(2010年，美国公司用于食品、糖果和饮料的广告费用高达85亿美元，这里面都还不包括酒类产品的广告费用)。
Globalization, of course, magnifies it all worldwide—developing countries export high-quality food to rich countries and import refined grains (加工而成的谷类粮食). Poor families who in the past may have eaten a diet high in fruits and vegetables from local farms now rely mainly on starchy (淀粉的) staples (主食) and ingest higher proportions of fats and sugars. As De Schutter put it, “Urbanization, supermarketization, and the global spread of modern lifestyles have shaken up traditional food habits. The result is a public health disaster.” In other words, along with the super-processed food, we’re exporting diabetes and heart disease, and it’s not surprising that the worst effects are on people who are poor, particularly poor women.
当然，全球化将这一问题扩散到了全世界——发展中国家向富裕国家出口高质量的食物，却进口加工后的细粮。过去，贫困家庭的饮食主要以当地农庄出产的水果和蔬菜为主，但现在他们却主要进食淀粉类主食，并摄入了更多的脂肪和糖类。德舒特指出：“城市化、超市化以及席卷全球的现代生活方式颠覆了传统的饮食习惯，而这给公众健康带来了灾难性的后果。”换句话说，我们在出口过度加工的食品的同时，也在出口糖尿病和心脏病，这就难怪最大的受害群体是穷人，尤其是贫困的妇女。
The U.N. report named five strategies to move toward a more sustainable approach to nutrition:
1) tax unhealthy products;
2) regulate foods high in saturated (饱和的) fats, salt, and sugar;
3) crack down on junk food advertising;
4) overhaul (革新) misguided agricultural subsidies that make certain ingredients cheaper than others; and
5) support local food production so that consumers have access to healthy, fresh, and nutritious foods.
None of those actions will be easy to accomplish in a domestic and international system where profit trumps (胜过) health justice.
为了让人们获得营养的方式更具可持续性，联合国报告提出了五大策略：
①对不健康食品征税；
②控制富含饱和脂肪、高盐分以及高糖分的食品；
③取缔垃圾食品广告；
④改革受到误导的农业补贴政策，这些政策造成某些特定原料的价格低于其他原料；
⑤扶持当地食品生产，让消费者能够获得健康、新鲜、营养丰富的食物。
但是在现有的国内和国际体系下，要执行以上任何措施都并非易事，在两大体系中，对利润的追求往往会击败对健康公正的追求。
The good news is that people are starting to pay attention. There’s a growing recognition that what we put in our bodies isn’t just about ourselves; it has everything to do with our relationships with our communities and our broader world—human and natural. Food connects us, in profound ways we’re only beginning to understand, to the beautiful, fragile, precious web of life.
好在人们已开始关注健康问题。越来越多的人开始意识到，吃什么不仅是我们个人的私事，还与我们生活的社区以及更为广阔的世界——人类社会和自然界——息息相关。食物以某种深刻的方式把我们与美丽、脆弱而珍贵的生命之网连结在一起，而对于这种方式的了解，我们才刚刚起步。
没事你就玩个小游戏呀~
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