關於食物的十大奇聞異事(下)

Detonation Tenderizer: A Literal Flavor Explosion

5.利用爆炸衝擊改變肉質

Over the years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rounded up herds of ideas for tenderizing meat, from the familiar (spiky hammers, enzymatic tenderizers) to the outlandish (using pressure pulses or acoustic waves on submerged meat). But none packed quite the punch of U.S. Patent No. 3,492,688 A, understatedly titled "Apparatus for tenderizing food." Submitted by Charles S. Godfrey in 1966, the method called for breaking up tough fibers in subprime cuts via high explosives. Bomb and beef would bathe in the same water-filled tank to maximize the effect

多年來，美國專利及商標局蒐集了各種使肉質鮮嫩的技術，從傳統手藝（敲擊，酶嫩化劑）到創新技術（使用壓力脈衝或聲波讓肉均勻變化）應有盡有。但卻沒有技術能比得上序號爲3492688 A的美國專利，它被低調地命名爲“柔化食品設備”。1966年，查爾斯·戈弗雷提出申請這項專利，宣傳通過烈性炸藥打破動物的硬質纖維肉，並把炸藥和牛肉放在同一個水罐中來達到最佳效果。

Godfrey thought that the high explosive approach would blow past the shortcomings of other pressure techniques by creating a much more dramatic and sudden pressure change at the shock front. He might have been onto something, since several other patents have since built on the idea, and at least one company has put it into practice. A pioneer of early nuclear weapons research, Godfrey was also a seasoned veteran of explosive technologies. In addition to helping design the diminutive test nukes set off on Eniwetok Atoll in the 1950s, he held patents in high velocity explosives and shaped explosives and the use of explosives in rock fracturing and excavation.

戈佛雷認爲，高爆方法能在激振前沿創造出更顯著的突變，從而彌補過去其他壓力技術的缺點。也許他這項發明真的很厲害，因爲他的設計理念已經在其他幾項專利中得到體現，而且至少有一家公司已經把這項技術付諸實踐。作爲早期核武器研究的先驅，戈佛雷還是一名經驗豐富的爆破技術老兵。20世紀50年代，他在埃尼威托克的環礁協助設計微型核武器爆破試驗，此外他還持有高速炸藥、變形炸藥、爆破和開挖岩石炸藥的專利。

: So Many Words, So Many Food Fixations

4.異食癖：吃任何東西，什麼都可以吃

We all have our share of unusual cravings, but few are as startling as the wide range of materials consumed by people with the disorder pica, the repeated eating of largely non-nutritive substances like wood, soil or paint chips. The word pica derives from the medieval Latin name for magpie, a bird reputed to eat just about anything

任何人都可能有一些奇特的慾望，但是卻很少有像那些異食癖患者一樣有着令人咋舌的慾望，他們吃各種東西，比如木頭、泥土或者油漆木片這種沒有營養的物質。異食癖這個單詞來源於中世紀的拉丁語，意思是喜鵲，因爲喜鵲普遍被認爲是吃任何東西的鳥類。

Thanks to Greek and Latin, there's a name for every neurosis, and the many flavors of pica are no different. Xylophagia describes the consumption of paper, pencils, tree bark or other woody items. Chewing and eating glass is the habit of those with hyalophagia, and of course there's also urophagia (urine), coprophagia (feces), geophagia(dirt), autosarcophagy (eating bits of oneself) and, yes, anthropophagy (human flesh). People with trichophagia chew and/or swallow their own hair, which can result in a dangerous trichobezoar (hairball) that blocks the intestines and requires surgery. In 2007, surgeons removed a 10-pound (4.5-kilogram) trichobezoar that had completely filled the stomach of an 18-year-old woman. Such compulsions are frequently associated with a psychological condition or learning disorder. The prevalence of pica varies from 4 to 26 percent among the institutionalized, and the condition can co-occur with Kleine-Levin syndrome, mental retardation and schizophrenia. But it also can crop up among otherwise healthy children and in men and women of all ages and cultures, sometimes in response to a dietary deficiency.

藉助拉丁語和希臘語，使得每一種神經病症都有學名，不過異食癖也有許多不同的類型。食木癖患者是來形容那些喜歡吃紙，鉛筆，樹皮或者是其他木質品的人，而習慣吃玻璃的人則被稱爲食玻璃癖患者，此外還有喝尿癖、食糞癖、食土癖，食己癖，自然也有食人癖（喜歡吃人肉）患者。而有食毛癖的人則喜歡咀嚼或者吞嚥自己的毛髮，這樣會導致腸子被危險的毛團堵塞，需要動手術來疏通。2007年，曾有一個18歲的食毛癖女性，通過手術移除了塞滿其腹腔的近10英鎊重（4.5千克）的毛髮團。不過這些強迫症主要和心理狀況以及學習障礙有關。在那些缺乏自理能力的人身上，這種異食癖的發病率大約在4%到26%之間，這種病症還可能引起克萊恩萊文綜合徵、智力缺陷以及精神分裂症等併發症。但是健康的孩子，不同文化背景不同年齡層次的成人也會突發異食癖，有時只是因爲他們的飲食不均衡導致缺乏營養物質。

Pickle-ice-cream-flavored Mystery of Pregnancy Cravings

3.鹹菜冰激凌味兒的料理——揭祕孕婦的奇葩口味

The scene depicting a pregnant woman dispatching her mate for pickles and ice cream in the wee small hours is so trite as to qualify as a stereotype, but it's rooted in a familiar phenomenon. Being pregnant can cause unusual cravings, drive a desire to double down on old habits or bring on new and strong aversions. Yet researchers still don't fully understand the biological and behavioral mechanisms behind these hankerings.

在生活中，我們總是能看到這樣的情景——一個孕婦催着丈夫去買鹹菜和冰激凌，讓他快去快回。這個情景着實老套，也再平常不過。懷孕能讓你的口味變得奇特，原來的飲食習慣會加倍凸顯，還可能發生從來沒有過的激烈反應。。然而，研究者們仍然不瞭解這些奇特口味背後的生物學和行爲學原理。

A few patterns have emerged over the years. For example, an expecting mother's cravings tend to fall within culturally available fare; in Tanzania, women crave (in order) meat, mangoes, yogurt, oranges, plantains and soft drinks, whereas American women crave dairy and sweet foods. Connections have also emerged between pregnancy-linked hormone shifts and an increase in neuropeptide Y, a hypothalamus-born chemical messenger associated with appetite in general. So what inspires specific cravings? It's possible that some yens are meant to counter the odd smells, strange tastes, phantom odors and food aversions that can crop up during pregnancy. But this is only one possibility and requires further study.

近年來出現了很多不同的孕婦飲食偏好模式。例如，在一些飲食文化中，準媽媽們的口味會變淡；在坦桑尼亞，孕婦變得愛吃肉、芒果、酸奶酪、橙子、大蕉等食物以及愛喝軟飲料；而在美國，孕婦的日常飲食則偏重奶製品和甜品。研究者還發現，孕激素的變化能導致神經肽Y增多，而神經肽Y是下丘腦產生的一種與食慾有關的信號激素。那麼到底是什麼導致了這種奇特的口味呢？可能是爲了抑制懷孕期間聞到的、吃到的或只是假想的怪味，以及突發的妊娠反應。但是這只是一種可能性，具體情況如何，還需要進一步探究。

Nose Knows Numminess

2.鼻子熟識美味

We all recognize the role of smell in whetting our appetites, conjuring emotions and stirring memories, yet those little buds on our tongues still get most of the credit for detecting taste. According to researchers in the field of neurogastronomy, however, we have it backward.

我們都知道嗅覺能引起我們的食慾、激發我們的情緒、勾起我們的回憶，但我們不知道的是察辨味道主要還是歸功於我們舌尖上小小的味蕾。在神經美食學領域的研究者看來，我們早已落後。

Taste buds evolved to detect basic notes of sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (the savory flavor of mushroom or soy sauce) to help us distinguish energy-rich carbohydrates, find essential salts, test foods for ripeness, detect toxins and identify proteins . But it's the sensation of smell -- specifically, the retronasal smells that waft into the nasal cavity from the mouth as we savor food -- that forms the fuller picture of flavor in our brains. Smell is so nuanced that scientists have compared it to sight for the way it forms "pictures" of millions of flavor combinations and determines resemblances among them. Research has further linked the sense of smell to psychological well-being and neuroplasticity. Molecular gastronomists, who try to understand the physics and chemistry of food for artistic and culinary effects, make careful use of odorants and aromatics in their creations, but the interactions between saliva and food make isolating the key smell-ecular elements difficult. Oh, well. There's always marketing.

味蕾進化是爲了分辨基本的甜、鹹、酸、苦及鮮（蘑菇或醬油的鹹味香精），以此來幫助我們區分高熱量的碳水化合物、發現人體所需鹽分、檢驗食物是否成熟、探測毒素以及識別蛋白質。但嗅覺，尤其是餘味，在我們品嚐食物時從嘴裏飄進鼻腔，如此便在我們的大腦中形成一幅更完整的圖片。嗅覺是如此微妙，科學家們將它與視覺做對比，來找出數百萬種味道混合成“圖片”的形成方式以及其相似性的判定方式。研究進一步認爲嗅覺與心理健康和神經可塑性相關聯。而所謂的分子美食家，就是那些爲了藝術效果和食用效果去研究食物的物理、化學特性並在食物的再創造過程中悉心運用氣味和芳香劑的人。但是唾液和食物之間的相互作用加大了隔離關鍵性“味道因子”的難度。噢！對了，市場總是以此爲促銷噱頭。

1.A Food by Any Other Name

1.食物的其他名字

Foods are known by many names. Some refer to subtle distinctions, as coriander and cilantro refer to the seeds and the vegetative pieces, respectively, of the Coriandrum sativum plant. Others might reveal cases of mistaken identity, as when many Americans each Thanksgiving mislabel sweet potatoes as yams, when in fact they are two separate plants.

食物通常有許多名字。有些是有着細微差別的，比如胡荽葉和芫荽葉分別指芫荽植物的種子和葉子。但也有一些認錯食物名稱的事例，比如每到感恩節，大多數美國人會錯把番薯稱爲薯蕷，其實它們是兩種截然不同的植物。

Then there are those foods that assume new monikers for marketing purposes. Canola (a portmanteau of "Canada " and "ola" for oil) is actually a specially bred rapeseed oil rebranded to avoid negative associations with the word "rape" (rape, or Brassica napus, is a plant in the mustard family) and possibly to distance it from earlier versions of rapeseed oil, which were toxic to humans . Kiwifruit is not from New Zealand at all -- it's a Chinese gooseberry rebranded by exporters to avoid negative associations in Cold War American markets. It's also not a gooseberry, so it's just as well that they changed its Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) was renamed "Chilean sea bass" to better whet customer appetites and was so successful that it now faces overfishing, despite not being a sea bass at all. For similar reasons, restaurant customers now know the "slimehead" (Hoplostethus atlanticus) as the far more appealing "orange roughy". A rose is a rose is a rose, but cheap hake sells better as scarlet snapper.

出於營銷目的，還有一些食物採用了新名字。如芥花油（是從 “Canada Oil Low Acid” 四個字的首字母組合而成，意爲 “低酸加拿大油”）實際上是一種經特殊培養的菜籽油，但或許是爲了避免”rape”（蕓薹或甘藍型油菜，是一種十字花科植物）這個詞彙帶來消極影響，也或是爲了區分對人體有毒害作用的早期菜籽油，它就被重新命名了。獼猴桃並不是來自新西蘭——它其實是中國鵝莓，是出口商爲避免冷戰期間美國市場帶來的消極影響而重新起的名字。它也不是醋栗，所以只是他們換了名稱而已。巴塔哥尼亞齒魚（小鱗犬牙南極魚）被重命名爲智利海鱸魚是爲了更好地刺激消費者的購買慾，而且獲得了巨大的成功。儘管它不是鱸魚，但它現在也面臨過度捕撈的局面。基於類似的原因，餐廳顧客現在都知道聽起來更有吸引力的“羅非魚”其實就是“燧鯛”（大西洋胸棘鯛）。一朵玫瑰就像一朵玫瑰是一朵玫瑰一樣，但廉價的鱈魚就是要比大紅鯛魚賣得好。

翻譯：泯泯 審校：Freya然 來源：前十網