垃圾食品折射社会等级

Ｊｏｈａｎｎ　Ｈａｒｉ

It has always seemed depressing to me that the people who claim to sympathise with the working classes have such contempt for their culinary habits. I saw a demo outside a McDonald's this summer that seemed to be based entirely on the fact that the food is "disgusting". Enough with the aesthetic arguments against junk food: plenty of people enjoy it, and to dismiss them all as thick or vulgar is offensive.

一些人自称同情劳动阶级却如此鄙视劳动阶级的饮食习惯，我常为此感到沮丧。今年夏天我看到一家麦当劳门口的一个抗议活动似乎完全基于这样一个事实：这些食物“令人恶心”。受够了从美学角度针对垃圾食品的争论：很多人喜欢垃圾食品，如果因此认为他们愚蠢或庸俗实属冒犯。

If people want to abuse their own bodies, they should be free to do so. Smoking, drinking, over-eating, under-exercising? It's your own business - provided you are aware of the risks and you have genuine choices. It's the job of the government to make sure you understand what you're doing to yourself, and to make sure alternatives are available if you want to stop.

如果谁想虐待自己的身体，他们大可以自行其便。抽烟、喝酒、暴食、懒于运动？这是你自己的事情——只要你知道其中的风险，并且自愿做出这些选择。使你明白自己在对自己干什么，确保如果你想停止下来的话，还有选择的余地，这些都是政府的职责。

At first, the idea of the government warning you about the risks involved in a poor diet sounds patronising. Everybody knows non-stop kebabs are bad for you? But how many of us know that even a healthy sounding breakfast cereal can be as full of sugars and salts and fats as a quarter-pounder with cheese? How many of us know that fruit juices can often be more sugary and bad for you than a can of Coke? Tons of research shows that people often assume their diet is far more healthy than it actually is. That's what happens in a raw, unhindered market: unclear and even deceptive labelling.

起初，政府告诫你不良饮食会带来不良后果，这听上去似乎认为我们都很无知。但谁都知道无节制地吃烤肉串对你有害吗？而我们当中有多少人知道，一份听上去有益健康的早餐麦片粥与四分之一磅的奶酪相比，它们的糖份、盐份和脂肪的含量都一样多呢？有多少人知道，与一罐可乐相比，果汁的含糖量通常更高，更不利于你的健康？大量研究结果显示，人们通常认为自己的饮食很健康，但事实并非如此。不规范的市场常常出现这样的情况：产品的标签含糊甚至具有欺骗性。

This becomes clear when you look at specific examples from the real world. Class is the flabby elephant in the room in this discussion. All the research indicates that poor people are disproportionately fat, and it's not because they are somehow congenitally lazy or greedy. The reality is that many poor people are trapped in what sociologists call "food deserts". Since very few poor people have cars and most of them have kids who can't be dragged on 10-mile bus journeys with piles of shopping bags, they are dependent on the nearest food retailers. In disadvantaged areas, the nearest food store is usually a corner shop with no fresh food. The rise of out-of-town supermarkets has made these nutrition-free zones even larger and decent food even harder to get to.

当你观察到现实生活中的一些具体实例时，一切变得很明了。在这个讨论中，等级的存在是众目昭彰却避而不谈的事实。所有研究结果指出，穷人畸形肥胖不是因为他们天生好吃懒做。事实上是因为很多穷人陷入了社会学家所谓的“食物沙漠”。因为只有少数穷人有车，而大部分穷人的孩子们都还太小，大人不方便提着大堆购物袋带着孩子乘坐公共汽车长途颠簸，他们只好依赖最近的食品零售商。在欠发达地区，最近的食品商店通常是不能提供新鲜食物的坐落在角落里的小店。市外超市的出现使这些无营养食品的覆盖面更广，人们更难获得健康的食物。

I've seen this where many of my relatives live. If you can't afford a taxi back from the supermarket miles away, it's literally impossible to do any decent shopping; there just isn't any fresh food on sale within travelling distance, so you settle for stacks of frozen and tinned food from the local corner-shop. It's like being trapped in a sea of lard. You go and live there and try to stay thin.

我在很多亲戚居住的地方见到过这样的情况。如果你承担不起从数英里以外的超市打车回家，那你的确无法进行满意的购物；在一定路程内，没有任何新鲜食物可以提供，所以你只好满足于角落小店里买来的成堆的冷冻食品和罐头食品。这就像掉进一个猪油沟，你前往那里，在那里生活，然后努力保持身材。

This is the old story of what happens when markets are not properly regulated: they screw the poor. How is that a meaningful form of libertarianism? In this instance, markets deny the choice of healthy food to the very people who need it most.

在市场没有得到良好整顿的时候以下事情屡见不鲜：穷人受苦。这种“有意义的自由主义形式”你怎么看待？在这种情况下，市场使最需要健康食物的人们别无选择。