咀嚼之聲有奇效：聆聽咀嚼聲有助於減肥

The sounds you make while chewing have a significant effect on the amount of food you eat, a new study has found. The results suggest that people are likely to consume less if they can hear themselves eating.
最新研究表明，人們在咀嚼東西時發出的聲音會顯著影響食物攝入量。研究顯示，如果人們能夠聽到自己咀嚼時的聲音，其食量很可能會減少。

Researchers at Brigham Young University and Colorado State University have found that your TV, radio, and computer are making you fat. Not by bombarding you with food ads (though they totally are) but by blocking the sounds of your chewing. In a recent study, they found that the noise your food makes while you’re eating can have a significant effect on how much food you eat.
楊百翰大學和科羅拉多州立大學的研究人員發現，電視、收音機和電腦會使人增胖。並不是因爲這些設備會帶來鋪天蓋地的食品廣告（儘管確實如此），而是設備播放的聲音會掩蓋咀嚼聲。近日，研究人員發現，吃東西時發出的咀嚼聲對進食量有明顯影響。

“Sound is typically labeled as the forgotten food sense,” adds Ryan Elder, assistant professor of marketing at BYU’s Marriott School of Management. “But if people are more focused on the sound the food makes, it could reduce consumption.”
楊百翰大學麥裏特商學院市場學助理教授瑞安·埃爾德補充說道：“通常我們認爲，聲音是被遺忘的食感。但如果人們更注意聆聽進食的聲音，進食量便會減少。”

“For the most part, consumers and researchers have overlooked food sound as an important sensory cue in the eating experience,” said study coauthor Gina Mohr, an assistant professor of marketing at CSU.
該研究的另一位作者、科羅拉多州立大學市場學助理教授吉娜·莫爾說：“咀嚼的聲音是進食過程中的重要感官暗示，但進食者和研究者大多會忽略這一點。”

The team carried out three separate experiments to quantify the effects of “food sound salience” on quantity of food consumed during a meal. In one experiment, participants were given snacks to eat while they wore headphones playing either loud or quiet noises. The ones loud enough to mask the sound of chewing made subjects eat more — 4 pretzels compared to 2.75 pretzels for the “quiet” group.
研究團隊進行了三項獨立實驗，以量化“進食聲音特性”對於食物攝入量的影響。在一項實驗中，研究人員將實驗對象分爲兩組，讓其在進食時帶上耳機，耳機裏分別播放着大小不同音量的聲音。耳機音量蓋過了咀嚼聲的實驗組成員進食更多——吃了4個椒鹽捲餅，而耳機音量小的受試者只吃了2.75個。

In another of their experiments they found that just having people hear chewing sounds through an advertisement can decrease the amount they eat.
在另一項實驗中，研究人員發現，僅是聽着廣告中播放的咀嚼聲，便能使人減少進食。

Elder and Morh call this the “Crunch Effect.” The main takeaway of their work should be the idea of mindfulness, they said. Being more mindful of not just the taste and physical appearance of food, but also of the sound it makes can help consumers to eat less.
埃爾德和莫爾稱此現象爲“咀嚼的聲音效應”。他們表示，此項研究表明，進食時應更爲專注。不僅要關注食物的味道和賣相，還要注重進食時產生的咀嚼聲，因爲這個聲音會讓人減少攝食量。

“When you mask the sound of consumption, like when you watch TV while eating, you take away one of those senses and it may cause you to eat more than you would normally,” Elder said.
“當進食的聲音被掩蓋時，比如邊看電視邊吃飯，人們失去了聲音這種感官刺激，因此攝食會超過其正常食量。”埃爾德說道。

“The effects may not seem huge —one less pretzel— but over the course of a week, month, or year, it could really add up.”
“這種效應的影響也許不明顯——只是少吃了一個椒鹽捲餅而已——但日積月累，將產生顯著的減肥效果。”

So the next time you sit down for a meal, take your headphones off and mute the TV. Or find a movie where there’s a lot of very audible chewing.
所以下次吃飯時，請摘掉耳機，讓電視靜音，或是找個有大量咀嚼聲音的電影看看。

Vocabulary

salience: 性質，特徵
pretzel: 椒鹽捲餅