科学美国人60秒 SSS 慢慢吃 不着急哦

（单词翻译）

Eat Slowly and Breathe Smoothly¹ to Enhance Taste 慢慢吃 不着急哦

Ever lose your ability to taste during a cold, because your nose is stuffed up? That’s because the nose is intimately involved with taste. When you chew, volatile² flavor compounds from the food get lofted³ toward the back of your mouth. And when you exhale⁴ you carry some of those flavor compounds up into your nasal cavity, where they hit olfactory⁵ receptors.

有没有过这样的经历?感冒时，因为鼻子阻塞，品尝起东西来，索然无味?那是因为鼻子和味觉有着紧密的联系。当你在咀嚼食物时，食物中蕴含的芬香化合物落在嘴中。在吸气时，一些芬香的气味就会进入你的鼻腔，刺激嗅觉受体。

"As children we basically learn, the first lesson of table manners is to keep the mouth closed while chewing, and you also want to breathe smoothly." Rui Ni, a mechanical engineer at Penn State. "I think not only because it's courteous⁶, but you can also smell the food much better if you breathe smoothly."

当在孩提时代，我们实际上学到的，餐桌礼仪的第一课就是，在吃食物的时候，嘴巴紧闭，同时呼吸平缓。瑞倪是宾夕法尼亚州立大学的机械工程师。他说到：“我认为那样做不仅仅是因为礼貌，同时，呼吸平缓，可以更好的闻到食物的味道。”

The backdoor by which smell contributes to taste is called "retronasal olfaction." And it turns out our airways⁸ are exquisitely⁹ tuned¹⁰ to enhance that effect.

嗅觉对味觉的秘密通道，我们称之为“鼻后嗅觉”。结果表明，呼吸道通过精美地调节来增强这种效果。

Ni and his colleagues 3D-printed a model of a woman's airway⁷, using a CT scan as a template. To track airflow, they laced water with fluorescent¹¹ particles and pumped it through the apparatus¹², filming the results. They found that when you breathe in, that inward airflow actually forms a curtain at the back of your mouth, blocking food particles from getting into the lungs--a good thing. And when you exhale, air swirls¹³ through that cavity in the back of the mouth, sweeping¹⁴ up those volatile particles and delivering them right to the nasal cavity, where you can smell them. The results appear in the Proceedings¹⁵ of the National Academy of Sciences.

倪瑞和自己的同事利用3D打印技术模拟了女性的呼吸道，使用CT扫描作为模板。为了跟踪气流，他们在水内混合荧光粒子，并利用装置抽取水，然后拍摄记录结果。倪瑞他们发现，人体在吸气时，向内的气流实际上会在口腔内后部形成遮蔽，阻止食物粒子进入肺部——这是好事。当人体在呼气时，气体在口腔后部形成漩涡，清扫那些有气味的食物颗粒，将他们送入鼻腔，这样你就能闻到食物的味道。该研究结果发表在《美国国家科学学院院刊》杂志上。

There is a way to derail this well-tuned system: the effect's ruined if you're really huffing and puffing¹⁶. Meaning if you're wolfing down your food, gasping¹⁷ for air, that turbulent breathing actually delivers more of those food molecules¹⁸ into your lungs and less up into the nasal cavity. In other words, your mother was right all along: keep your mouth shut and don’t bolt your food. It’ll cut the chances of choking, and enhance the taste of the meal.

有一种方法还可以破坏这样调节系统：如果你暴怒时，就会摧毁这种效果。即如果你吃食物时狼吞虎咽同时大口大口地喘着粗气，那么呼吸紊乱会将更多的食物分子送进肺中，而只有少量的食物颗粒会进入鼻腔。换而言之，妈妈说的是对的：吃饭时要闭嘴慢嚼、不要狼吞虎咽。这样会减少窒息的可能性，提高食物的味道。