科学美国人60秒 SSS 剩饭剩菜是食物浪费问题（在线收听）

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。

When restaurants first shut down early in the pandemic, Americans raided grocery stores.

餐厅在新冠疫情初期首次关闭时，美国人突袭了杂货店。

They started cooking more at home—and, presumably, generating more leftovers.

他们开始更多地在家里做饭，这可能会产生更多的剩饭剩菜。

Those leftovers can be a convenient future meal—but they've also got a dark side.

这些剩饭剩菜可以成为未来方便的一餐，但它们也有不好的一面。

"There's a tendency that if you put an item on a plate that's a leftover, there's a higher probability that you're not going to fully consume that item.

“有一种趋势是，如果你将剩菜放在盘子里，那你很有可能不会把它吃完。

And so it's probably going to go to waste."

因此剩菜可能会被浪费掉。”

Brian Roe, an applied economist at the Ohio State University.

俄亥俄州立大学的应用经济学家布莱恩·罗伊说到。

He and his colleagues recently studied leftovers and food waste by tracking the eating habits of 18 men and women in Baton Rouge, La.

他和同事最近通过追踪路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日18名男女的饮食习惯，研究了剩饭剩菜和食物浪费。

The participants tracked what they ate using an iPhone app.

参与者使用iPhone应用程序追踪他们吃了什么。

And during the weeklong study, the study subjects collectively piled 1,200 different foods on their plates.

在为期一周的研究中，研究对象在盘子里堆积了1200种不同的食物。

After analyzing what got eaten, saved or thrown away,

在分析参与者吃掉、保存和扔掉的东西后，

the researchers found that leftovers were more likely to be picked at and not fully eaten—a finding we can all probably identify with.

研究人员发现，剩饭剩菜更有可能只被吃一点，而不是完全吃掉——这是我们都可能认同的发现。

But they also observed that leftovers—perhaps due to being older and less fresh—directed diners' attention to the other, more novel items on their plate,

但他们也观察到，剩饭剩菜——可能是因为时间较长和不太新鲜——导致用餐者的注意力转向盘子里其他更新的食物上，

which brings up an interesting possible strategy to get people to eat their veggies.

这就提出了一个有趣的可能策略，让人们吃蔬菜。

"I guess if you have an item that you don't normally eat as much of, and you're trying to get people to eat their peas,

“我想，如果你有平时不常吃的食物，你试图让人们吃豌豆，

perhaps surrounding it with leftovers is a way to make them focus on the newest item on the plate."

也许在它周围放一些剩菜可以让他们专注于盘子里最新的食物。”

The findings are in the journal PLOS ONE.

研究结果发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》期刊上。

Overall, Roe says one bigger lesson emerged on how to avoid scraping food into the trash.

罗伊表示，总的来说，关于如何避免将食物扔进垃圾桶，出现了一个更大的教训。

"For us, the real take-home here was: all else equal, choose a smaller meal, and you're less likely to generate leftovers.

“对我们来说，真正的收获是：在其他条件相同的情况下，选择更少的食物，这样就不太可能产生剩饭了。

And that's a good thing because leftovers, all else equal, tend to be wasted more often."

这是件好事，因为在其他条件相同的情况下，剩饭剩菜往往更容易被浪费。”

Not that Roe doesn't have aspirational Tupperware sitting around.

并不是说罗伊没有理想的特百惠保鲜盒。

"I'm guilty of this myself: we have things left over from last Thanksgiving still sitting in our freezer.

“我自己也对此感到内疚：我们的冰箱里还有去年感恩节的剩饭剩菜。

And I know people who've moved with frozen items before—without ever getting around to eating them."

我知道有些人曾带着冷冻食品搬家，却从未抽出时间吃掉这些食物。”

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。