BBC Ideas｜优化饮食的五个简易小贴士
英音听力｜BBC & 经济学人等
Five Simple Ways to Optimise Your Diet
When it comes to what you eat, there's no shortage of advice. TikTok is overflowing with it: a low-carb diet, raw food, cabbage soup, cucumber bagel diet, and on and on. If you're confused, it's no wonder. So here's five simple tips you can trust for healthy eating.
1. It's not just what you eat, but when.
If you eat a treat – say, a slice of chocolate cake – it's much better to eat it after a meal than on its own.
Why? It's all about keeping glucose spikes under control. Whenever you eat carbs, or sweet things, the level of glucose in your blood rises. If it rises very quickly and sharply, it will be followed by a crash. And that crash makes you feel tired, irritable, and hungry again.
But there are ways to keep these spikes under control. Exercising after you eat is one. Eating foods higher in fibre – like vegetables or porridge oats – is another. But the order you eat your food matters too.
If you're having something carb-heavy – like white rice or pasta – eating fat, protein, or vegetables before flattens that glucose curve. That's because having something in your stomach first slows down how quickly the carbohydrates reach the small intestine for digestion.
2. Calorie counting is not very useful.
Why? Well, for a start, it's notoriously hard to do. Most people underestimate their calorie intake by about 25%. But also because not all calories behave in the same way, once inside your body. Foods in their natural state – like nuts, fruit, vegetables, and fish, or anything that's not been processed – require more energy from the body to digest them.
This is called the thermic effect of food. And it means that things like nuts, which are high in calories, can still be a healthy option, as the body uses so much energy digesting them.
3. Give your gut microbiome some love.
The gut microbiome is everything in the digestive tract. It's a huge ecosystem that contains trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and cells. And it can weigh as much as 2 kilos. Research suggests the make-up of your gut microbiome could have really profound effects on your physical health and potentially on your mental health too.
For a healthy microbiome, and a healthy you, you should aim to eat a wide range of different foods. Seeds, fruit, vegetables, the yoghurt drink kefir and other fermented foods are particularly gut-friendly.
4. Limit ultra-processed foods.
Ultra-processed foods include, as you might expect, things like pizza, ready meals, biscuits, but also some quite surprising things, which tend to be thought of as healthy – like most supermarket breads, many breakfast cereals, and many milk and meat substitutes.
UPF are not labelled. But a good a rule of thumb is to look for ingredients you don't recognize – things you'd never have in your own kitchen, like emulsifiers, sweeteners, colourings and preservatives.
5. Personalised nutrition could be the future.
Another approach that's on the rise at the moment is that of personalised nutrition. And in 2014, two scientists, Eran Segal and Eran Elinav, found some really surprising results from an experiment. The blood glucose levels in their sample group varied widely after people ate the same food. The explanation? Well, it could be back to the make-up of our unique gut microbiomes.
But nutritionists are keen to point out that some key messages still apply across the board. So, for a healthy diet, aim for foods which are close to their natural state. An orange instead of orange juice. Brown rice instead of white rice. Dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.
Aim for a wide variety of foods. Try not to eat too many ingredients you don't recognise. And remember, you are what you eat. But when you eat matters too.
词汇表
no shortage of [ˈʃɔːtɪdʒ] 不缺乏，大量的
overflow with [ˌəʊvəˈfləʊ] 充满，洋溢着
low-carb diet [kɑːb ˈdaɪət] 低碳水化合物饮食
bagel [ˈbeɪɡl] 百吉饼，贝果，硬面包圈
glucose [ˈɡluːkəʊs] 血糖，葡萄糖
spike [ spaɪk] 猛增，飙升
carb / carbohydrate [kɑːb / ˌkɑːbəʊˈhaɪdreɪt] 碳水化合物
crash [kræʃ] （这里指血糖）骤降，暴跌
irritable [ˈɪrɪtəbl] 易怒的，烦躁的
fibre [ˈfaɪbə(r)] （食物的）纤维素；纤维制品
porridge oat [ˈpɒrɪdʒ əʊt] 燕麦粥，麦片粥
carb-heavy [kɑːb -ˈhevi] 高碳水化合物的
pasta [ˈpæstə] 意大利面食
flatten glucose curve [ˈflætn ˈɡluːkəʊs kɜːv] 使血糖曲线趋于平缓
small intestine [ɪnˈtestɪn] 小肠
digestion [daɪˈdʒestʃən] 消化，消化能力
calorie counting [ˈkæləri ˈkaʊntɪŋ] 计算卡路里，卡路里计数
notoriously [nəʊˈtɔːriəsli] 众所周知地，声名狼藉地
underestimate [ˌʌndərˈestɪmeɪt] 低估，对…估计不足，轻视
intake [ˈɪnteɪk] 摄入量，吸入量
gut microbiome [ɡʌt ˈmaɪkrəʊbaɪəʊm] 肠道微生物群（消化道内的大量微生物群落，包含细菌、真菌、病毒等）
digestive tract [daɪˈdʒestɪv trækt] 消化道
trillions of [ˈtrɪljənz] 数万亿的
bacteria [bækˈtɪəriə] 细菌（bacterium的复数）
fungi [ˈfʌŋɡaɪ] 真菌（fungus的复数）
virus [ˈvaɪrəs] 病毒
cell [sel] 细胞
make-up 组成，构成
💡完整词汇表、 翻译、视频版和pdf见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】
