大学英语综合教程5课文翻译

Let's Go Veggie!

1 If there was a single act that would improve your health, cut your risk of food-borne illnesses, and help preserve the environment and the welfare of millions of animals, would you do it?

咱们吃素吧!

如果有一件事，既能增进健康、减少患上食物引起的疾病的危险，又有助于保护环境、保护千万动物安全生存，你做不做？

2 The act I'm referring to is the choice you make every time you sit down to a meal.

我说的这件事就是每次坐下来就餐时挑选菜肴。

3 More than a million Canadians have already acted: They have chosen to not eat meat. And the pace of change has been dramatic.

一百多万加拿大人已经行动起来：他们决定不吃肉。变化速度之快令人惊叹。

4 Vegetarian food sales are showing unparalleled growth. Especially popular are meat-free burgers and hot dogs, and the plant-based cuisines of India, China, Mexico, Italy and Japan.

素食品的销售额大大增加，前所未有。尤受欢迎的是无肉汉堡包和热狗，以及以蔬为主的印度、中国、墨西哥、意大利和日本的菜肴。

5 Fuelling the shift toward vegetarianism have been the health recommendations of medical research. Study after study has uncovered the same basic truth: Plant foods lower your risk of chronic disease; animal foods increase it.

推动人们转向素食的是医学研究提出的关于如何增进健康的建议。一项又一项的研究都揭示了同样的基本事实：果蔬降低患慢性病的危险；肉类食品则增加这种危险。

6 The American Dietetic Association says: "Scientific data suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and reduced risk for several chronic degenerative diseases."

美国饮食学协会指出，“科学资料表明，素食与降低多种慢性变性疾病的患病危险肯定有关系。”

7 This past fall, after reviewing 4,500 studies on diet and cancer, the World Cancer Research Fund flatly stated: "We've been running the human biological engine on the wrong fuel."

去年秋天，在检验了4500个饮食与癌症的研究报告之后，世界癌症研究基金会直截了当地指出：“我们一向利用不合适的养料来维持人类生理引擎的运转。”

8 This "wrong fuel" has helped boost the cost of degenerative disease in Canada to an estimated $400 billion a year, according to Bruce Holub, a professor of nutritional science at the University of Guelph.

据威尔夫大学营养科学教授布鲁斯?霍拉勃称，这一“不合适的养料”致使加拿大每年用于治疗变性疾病的费用高达4000亿（加）元。

9 Animal foods have serious nutritional drawbacks: They are devoid of fiber, contain far too much saturated fat and cholesterol, and may even carry traces of hormones, steroids and antibiotics. It makes little difference whether you eat beef, pork, chicken or fish.

肉类食品存在严重的营养缺陷：它们不含纤维，含有过多的饱和脂肪和胆固醇，甚至可能含有微量的激素、类固醇和抗菌素。牛肉、猪肉、鸡肉或鱼肉都一样。

10 Animal foods are also gaining notoriety as breeding grounds for E. coli, campylobacter and other bacteria that cause illness. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, six out of ten chickens are infected with salmonella. It's like playing Russian roulette with your health.

肉类食品也是越来越广为人知的大肠杆菌、弯曲菌以及其他致病细菌的孳生地。据加拿大食品检验机构称，十分之六的鸡染有沙门氏菌。吃肉无异于玩俄式轮盘赌，拿你的健康做赌资。

11 So why aren't governments doing anything about this? Unfortunately, they have bowed to pressure from powerful lobby groups such as the Beef Information Center, the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency and the Dairy Farmers of Canada. According to documents retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act, these groups forced changes to Canada's latest food guide before it was released in 1993.

既然如此，政府为什么不采取任何措施？很遗憾，政府屈服于强有力的院外活动集团的压力，如牛肉信息中心、加拿大禽蛋营销公司、加拿大乳牛场场主协会等。根据信息自由法案获得的有关文件记载，这些集团迫使加拿大最新食品指南在1993年公布前作出修改。

12 This should come as no surprise: Even a minor reduction in recommended intakes of animal protein could cost these industries billions of dollars a year.

这并不奇怪。即使建议动物蛋白质的摄入量减少一丁点儿都会给这些企业带来每年数十亿元的损失。

13 While health and food safety are compelling reasons for choosing a vegetarian lifestyle, there are also larger issues to consider. Animal-based agriculture is one of the most environmentally destructive industries on the face of the Earth.

健康和食品安全是选择素食生活方式令人信服的理由，但此外还有更为重大的因素要考虑。以饲养动物为基础的农业是世界上对环境破坏最严重的产业之一。

14 Think for a moment about the vast resources required to raise, feed, shelter, transport, process and package the 500 million Canadian farm animals slaughtered each year. Water and energy are used at every step of the way. Alberta Agriculture calculates that it takes 10 to 20 times more energy to produce meat than to produce grain.

想一想培育、饲养、建牲畜栏、运输、加工和包装加拿大每年宰杀的5亿头牲畜所需的巨大资源。其中的每一个环节都耗费水和能源。阿尔伯达农业署估计，生产肉耗费的能源比生产谷物多10－20倍。

15 Less than a quarter of our agricultural land is used to feed people directly. The rest is devoted to grazing and growing food for animals. Ecosystems of forest, wetland and grassland have been decimated to fuel the demand for land. Using so much land heightens topsoil loss, the use of harsh fertilizers and pesticides, and the need for irrigation water from dammed rivers. If people can shift away from meat, much of this land could be converted back to wilderness.

用于直接为人们提供食物的土地还不到农业用地的四分之一。其余的都用来放牧和种饲料。森林、湿地和草原的生态系统遭受相当严重的破坏，以满足对土地的需求。土地的大量利用加剧了表土的流失，增加了会带来负面作用的化肥和杀虫剂的施用，增加了从筑有水坝的河流中引水灌溉的需求。如果人们能摒弃肉食，许多土地就能回复到未开垦状态。

16 The problem is that animals are inefficient at converting plants to edible flesh. It takes, for example, 8.4 kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of pork, the U. S. government estimates.

问题在于，动物在把植物转化为可食用的肉类这方面的效率很低。举例来说，美国政府估测，生产1公斤猪肉需要耗费8.4 公斤的谷物。

17 After putting so many resources into animals, what do we get out? Manure — at a rate of over 10,000 kilograms per second in Canada alone, according to the government. Environment Canada says cattle excrete 40 kilograms of manure for every kilogram of edible beef. A large egg factory can produce 50 to 100 tonnes of waste per week, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture estimates.

我们把这么多资源耗费在动物身上，又得到什么回报呢？粪肥——据官方资料，仅加拿大，就以每秒10,000多公斤的速度排出。加拿大环境部称，牛每产1公斤可食牛肉需排出40公斤粪便。安大略省农业部估测，一家大型禽蛋工厂每星期可产出50－100吨禽粪。

18 And where does it go? In the 1992 Ontario Groundwater Survey, 43 per cent of tested wells were contaminated with agricultural run-off containing fecal coliform bacteria and nitrates. Earlier this month, charges were laid against a large Alberta feedlot operator for dumping 30 million litres of cattle manure into the Bow River, "killing everything in its path," as a news story described it.

这些粪便都到哪儿去了？1992年安大略省地下水调查发现，43%的被测试水井都受到含有粪便大肠杆菌和硝酸盐等农业生产排出的废物的污染。本月初，阿尔伯达一家大型围栏肥育地经营者被指控将3千万升牛粪排入博河，“沿途生灵悉数被毁”，一则新闻这么报道。

19 And then there is methane, a primary contributing gas in global warming and ozone layer depletion. Excluding natural sources, 27 per cent of Canada's and 20 per cent of the world's methane comes from livestock.

此外还有沼气，那是促使全球气候变暖和臭氧层减少的主要气体。不把天然沼气资源包括在内，加拿大27%的沼气、全世界20%的沼气都来自牲畜。

20 John Robbins, author of the Pulitzer prize-nominated book Diet for a New America (Group West), said it best when he stated: "Eating lower on the food chain is perhaps the most potent single act we can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources."

获普利策提名奖的《新美洲饮食》一书作者约翰?罗宾斯说得好：“食用食物链较低部分的食物或许是我们可用以阻止环境破坏、保护自然资源的最最有效的行动。”