人人都听说过“甜食吃多了对健康有害”。研究发现食糖过量确实会引起一系列相关疾病。本集《随身英语》讲述过量食糖的隐患并讨论平衡饮食的重要性。

课文内容

Sweet or savoury? What kind of tastes do you like? If like me, you have a sweet tooth, you probably can't resist eating cakes, biscuits or chocolate and will sweeten your tea or coffee with spoonfuls of sugar – delicious! But the taste makes it very easy to ignore the warnings that too much of the white stuff is bad for our health.

Consuming sugar is an addiction – the more we eat, the more we want. Today's processed food, like ready meals, is laced with the stuff and many fizzy drinks contain seven teaspoons of sugar in just one can. In the UK, statistics show that sugar consumption is at its highest level in history and the government is trying to get the food industry to cut the amount of sugar in popular products like chocolate bars by 20% by 2020.

Of course, sugary food tastes nice, it can help lift our mood, and the glucose in it can give us an energy boost. But there are dangers too: a high-sugar diet is linked to obesity, and being overweight can increase the risk of getting type 2 diabetes. With these warning signs, I have considered changing my diet by replacing sugary snacks with fruit and savoury biscuits – but that's boring, I need my sugar fix!

I'm not alone. BBC journalist Radhika Shanghani, has gone one step further. Encouraged by some celebrities and nutritionists promoting a 'zero tolerance' approach to sugar, she gave it up altogether, thinking it would make her healthier. Initially she says, "My first fortnight involves mood swings worse than puberty. I have agonising headaches and feel permanently hungover." These symptoms disappeared but she still found food shopping hard as she was stressing about buying the right things.

Her experiment wasn't a success. She eventually sought advice from Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at Oxford University who said: “Lots of people enjoy sugar and gain pleasure from it, so one has to find a balance between enjoyment and eating the right amount."

There are health benefits of cutting down sugar such as improving dental care and reducing weight gain, but there's no need to be obsessive about it. Eating some sugar as part of a balanced diet is fine and exercising will help burn it off. So rather than dealing with your sugar cravings by cutting it out of your diet altogether, why not work on your willpower and learn to say 'no' to a second serving of chocolate fudge cheesecake.

词汇表

savoury 咸的

sweet tooth 喜好甜食

addiction 上瘾

processed food 加工食品

lace（偷偷地）给（食物或饮品）掺

glucose 葡萄糖

obesity 肥胖（症）

overweight 肥胖的，超重的

Type 2 diabetes 二型糖尿病

fix 用量（幽默的说法）

nutritionist 营养学家

zero tolerance 零容忍政策

mood swings 情绪波动

puberty 青春期

hungover 宿醉的

symptom 症状

a balance 平衡

dental care 牙科护理

weight gain 体重增加

obsessive 过分的

craving 难以抑制的渴求

willpower 意志力

*本文章由BBC英语教学授权，任何媒体禁止转载。点击这里获取更多BBC英语文章。

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