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  3. The Shape of Things to Come When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking pe

The Shape of Things to Come When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking pe

admin2019-07-30  159
问题     The Shape of Things to Come
    When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.
    Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy stored around their expanding bellies.
    Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m 20 years later, even though the world’ s population increased by 1. 6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas.
    As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world’ s biggest public-health issue today—the main cause of heart disease and diabetes. Since the World Health Organization labeled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast.
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答案 未来的身段 世界原本没有这么复杂。那时，富人胖，穷人瘦，头脑正常的人在发愁：怎样才能让挨饿的人吃上饭。而现在，在这个世界上的很多地方，富人瘦，穷人胖。头脑正常的人在为肥胖发愁。 这罪魁祸首就是进化。进化已将人类设定好了，它使人能对付匮乏，却不会应对富足。经过进化的完美调教，人们可以在丰年储存能量，靠它捱过荒年。但是如果坏年景总也不来，他们不断增长的肚皮上囤积的能量，就甩不掉了。 由于农业生产力不断提高，荒年在世界各地都更为罕见。当代的马尔萨斯论者曾画出各种图表，证明全世界的粮食马上就会吃完，而他们最近却不怎么吱声了。根据联合国的数据，粮食短缺的人口从1980年的9．2亿下降到了20年后的7．99亿，尽管世界人口同期增长了16亿。这总该是件可喜可贺的事情。人类打了个大胜仗，他们在这个星球上的绝大部分时间里，都在为赢得这场最大的战役而奋斗，那就是保证他们自己和子孙后代都能吃得饱。但是，凡是好事，都有可能向坏的方面转化，现在富足带来了一种新的烦恼，搞得人们在一大堆问题的决策上进退两难，这种近况令人关注。 肥胖这个当今世界的灾难，首先带来的是一个形象问题。它更容易让人联想到圣诞老人，而不是《圣经?启示录》中(给人类带来战争、饥荒、瘟疫和死亡的)那四匹马。但肥胖完全有理由和这四匹马并驾齐驱，因为它是当今世界公众健康最大的问题，是引起心脏病和糖尿病的主要原因。自从世界卫生组织2000年把肥胖列为“流行病”，对其可怕后果的报道一时间连篇累牍，铺天盖地。
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