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Food is the body’s fuel. Now a study finds that the amount of energy in that fuel can depend not just on its calorie content—but on how it’s prepared. And the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could explain an ancient leap in human evolution. [Rachel N. Carmody, Gil S. Weintraub and Richard W. Wrangham, Energetic consequences of thermal and nonthermal food processing]
我们能量的来源于食物。如今一项研究表明,食物中的能量不能仅看其含多少卡路里,而还要看这种食物是如何烹饪的。发表在“国家科学研究院学报”上的研究也许能解释早期人类进化飞跃的原因。

Food’s energy value is usually measured before consumption. But Harvard scientists fed two groups of mice either meat or sweet potatoes and prepared the items differently: either whole or pounded, raw or cooked—to create a variety of diets.
通常,我们衡量的是指吃下去之前食物的能量。但是哈佛的科学家们通过观察两组小白鼠,给它们分别喂食肉和红薯。但是这两组食物的烹饪方式不同:要么吃生的,要么是吃熟的。由此,造成了饮食上的不同。

The researchers then measured the mice. They found that pounded meat and potatoes caused more weight gain than raw food. And that cooking increased weight the most.
研究人员之后发现进食熟肉和熟红薯的小白鼠更易发胖。得出烹饪是发胖的罪魁祸首。

The extra calories cooking makes available may have allowed the survival of humans with larger bodies and more complex brains, starting almost 2 million years ago. Those physical changes required more energy, and exposing food to fire may have provided that boost.
正是这些多出来的卡路里,使人类能够在两百万年前有能量支撑更大的肢体与更复杂的大脑,而存活下来。因为这些生理上的变化需要更多的能量,而把食物放在火里烧烤也许起到了助推的作用。

Of course, a legacy of evolution is that modern humans often gain too much weight. Which might be called a raw deal.
当然,作为人类进化的遗产之一,现代人因而常容易发胖。也许一些人宁愿当初不要进化,用变胖换进化,这笔买卖貌似不值得啊。 

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