A Hot Pot of Debate
The strong smell of the famous Sichuan cooking floods into local streets, whose hot pots of chili (红辣椒) and oil boil like restless volcanoes (火山). Along with all the flavours, however, a wave of panic is in the air. Sichuan cuisine (美食) is facing a crisis.
It seems surprising to hear such concern, since Sichuan cuisine has been conquering the world and gaining considerable popularity abroad as China’s favourite out-of-home dining.
But according to some old and experienced cooks, the rapid growth has worsened the cuisine, drowning the tastes of dishes in large amounts of chili and oil with menus being narrowed to spicy (辛辣的) dishes. Many cooks now are pursuing spicier and spicier food, ignoring the great variety of the cuisine. Thus, the simplification of tastes has created a crisis, sending a strong shocking wave into the time-honoured but complex traditions. Early this year, I watched a young cook add green vegetable to Kung Pao Chicken, which should be a wonderful mix of chicken, peanuts, red chilies and spices.
However, voices from many young cooks throw light on the new demands on Sichuan cuisine in the modern time— ”There’s no survival without innovation.” They hold the view that we do have to maintain the tradition, but it’s not a display in a museum. What makes sense is that although Sichuanese cooking is classified as one of the eight great cuisines of China, its roots are quite shallow, so after over several centuries of trade and migration, outsiders brought in a variety of new ingredients and cooking techniques. These influences combined only several generations ago to create an unusually tasty cuisine.
I believe the attractiveness of Sichuan cuisine is that it’s a big melting pot. Whatever is attractive in other cuisines, it can be absorbed and adapted to Sichuan cuisine. It’s not right to judge who is right and who is wrong, but it is clear that we should preserve the essence of tradition, while meeting modern expectations as well.
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One way to know how much soda people drink is to ask them.
The problem? We tend to underestimate, lie or forget what we’ve consumed.
And this is a challenge for researchers who study the links between sugarsweetened beverages and obesity.
A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition explains a technique that could help researchers get a good measurement of sugary beverage consumption — by analyzing a piece of hair or a blood sample.
Researcher Diane O’Brien of the University of Alaska and her colleagues have used carbon isotope (同位素)analysis to develop their measuring tool. “We’re isolating the [carbon] isotope ratio in a specific molecule,” explains O’Brien. The molecule is an amino acid called alanine, which captures carbon from sugars.
It turns out that when you consume sweetened soda, slightly more of a particular kind of carbon called C13 gets trapped in alanine and incorporated into proteins. And proteins hang around in the body much longer than sugar does. So the scientists say they can sample proteins to look for extra amounts of C13 in alanine. People with a lot of C13 are likely to be people who have consumed a lot of corn syrup and cane sugar.
Using this technique, O’Brien says, you can capture a longerterm picture of sugar consumption compared with urine samples — which only reveal how much sugar a person has consumed in the past day or so.
Carbon isotope analysis has helped scientists piece together ancient dietary patterns, explains Dale Schoeller of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a commentary about the study: “The use of stable isotope signatures has even provided information about the diet of Otzi aka The Iceman, the 5,000yearold natural mummy found in the Alps in 1991.”
And he writes that he thinks the technique will be helpful for researchers studying the obesity epidemic.
“This should be a major step toward resolving the controversy over the role of caloric sweetener intake in the development of obesity,” writes Schoeller.
1、粽子的种类与制作；
2、与亲人们制作粽子过程的美好时刻。
注意：词数100字左右
参考词汇：芦苇叶 reed leaf；粽子 make rice dumplings
Rice Dumplings: a taste that is out of this world!
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