Leftovers and Food-Waste
When restaurants first shut down early in the pandemic, Americans raided grocery stores. They started cooking more at home—and, presumably, generating more leftovers. Those leftovers can be a convenient future meal—but they’ve got a dark side, too.
疫情初期美国餐馆关门，美国人"洗劫"了杂货店。他们开始更多地在家做饭，因此，也可能产生了很多的剩菜。这些剩菜可以成为未来的方便餐——但它们也有不好的一面。
“There’s a tendency that if you put an item on a plate that’s a leftover, there’s a higher probability that you’re not going to fully consume that item. And so it’s probably going to go to waste.”
“一种趋势是，如果把东西放在盘子里，那就是剩菜，就很有可能不会把它全部吃完。所以很可能会被浪费掉。”
Brian Roe, an applied economist at the Ohio State University. He and his colleagues recently studied leftovers and food waste by tracking the eating habits of 18 men and women in Baton Rouge, La. The participants tracked what they ate using an iPhone app. And during the weeklong study, the study subjects collectively piled 1.200 different foods on their plates.
俄亥俄州立大学的应用经济学家布莱恩·罗伊说道。他和同事们最近通过追踪路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日的18名男性和女性的饮食习惯，研究了剩饭剩菜和食物垃圾，。在为期一周的研究中，研究对象们在自己的盘子里总共堆放了1200种不同的食物。
After analyzing what got eaten, saved or thrown away, the researchers found that leftovers were more likely to be picked at and not fully eaten—a finding we can all probably identify with.
在分析了吃了什么、保存了什么、扔掉了什么之后，研究人员发现，剩菜更有可能被挑出来，而不是完全吃掉——这一发现得到了我们的认同。
But they also observed that leftovers—perhaps due to being older and less fresh—directed diners’ attention to the other, more novel items on their plate, which brings up an interesting possible strategy to get people to eat their veggies.
但他们也观察到，老了或者不太新鲜的剩菜，会把食客的注意力转移到盘子里其他更新奇的食物上，这就提出了一个能让人们吃蔬菜更有趣的策略。
“I guess if you have an item that you don’t normally eat as much of, and you’re trying to get people to eat their peas, perhaps surrounding it with leftovers is a way to make them focus on the newest item on the plate.”
“我猜，如果你有一样平常不爱的东西，你想让人们吃豌豆，也许用剩菜裹住豌豆可以让他们专注于盘子里最新的东西。”
The findings are in the journal PLOS ONE.《公共科学图书馆·综合》杂志
Overall, Roe says one bigger lesson emerged on how to avoid scraping food into the trash.
罗伊说，总的来说，在如何避免将食物扔进垃圾桶的问题上，我们得到了一个更大的教训。
“For us, the real take-home here was: all else equal, choose a smaller meal, and you’re less likely to generate leftovers. And that’s a good thing because leftovers, all else equal, tend to be wasted more often.”
对我们来说，真正的收获是:在其他条件相同的情况下，少吃点，剩下的东西就少了。”这是件好事，因为在其他条件相同的情况下，剩菜更容易被浪费掉。”
Not that Roe doesn’t have aspirational Tupperware sitting around.
并不是说，罗伊周围没有理想得特百惠(一个快餐店)。
“I’m guilty of this myself: we have things left over from last Thanksgiving still sitting in our freezer. And I know people who’ve moved with frozen items before—without ever getting around to eating them.”
我自己也为此感到内疚:我们的冰箱里还放着去年感恩节剩下的东西。我知道人们经常搬很多的冷冻食品——但从来没有机会吃它们。”
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