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In 1987, Bob Shapiro, who was then the president of NutraSweet, the American company that originally marketed aspartame, noted that one of the “cardinal rules” in western culture was that pleasure always came at a cost.
1987年，鲍勃·夏皮罗指出，西方文化中的“基本规则”之一是，快乐总是要付出代价的。夏皮罗当时是美国最早推销阿斯巴甜NutraSweet公司的总裁。
Shapiro added: “What we are saying to people is ‘you can have the pleasure without paying the price’. That’s like saying there is such a thing as a free lunch.”
夏皮罗补充说: “我们想对人们说的是，‘你可以不用付出代价就能享受快乐’。这就像在说世界上有免费的午餐一样。”
In the story of modern food, sweeteners have been a “free lunch” both to those who sell them and those who consume them.
在现代食品的故事中，甜味剂对销售商和消费者来说都是一顿“免费午餐”。
For the big food companies, they have played a key role in keeping products both profitable and palatable.
于大型食品公司而言，它们在让产品既赚钱又美味方面发挥了关键作用。
Not only are sweeteners much cheaper ingredients than sugar, they have also been one of the central mechanisms by which the food industry persuades us to buy and consume more.
甜味剂不仅比糖便宜得多，而且也是食品工业说服我们购买以及食用更多的主要机制之一。
Most adults only need to eat around 2,000-2,600 calories a day.
大多数成年人每天只需要摄入大约2000 - 2600卡路里的热量。
This is a problem for businesses that want to achieve constant growth.
对于想要实现持续增长的企业来说，这是一个问题。
Sweeteners were a way round this – a means by which the multinationals could encourage us to buy more food and drink than we needed, without going over our daily calorie limits.
甜味剂是绕过这个问题的一种方法——跨国公司可以通过这种方法鼓励我们购买超出我们需要的、但又不会超出每日热量限制的食品和饮料。
For millions of people, diet drinks provide coping mechanisms: little moments of guilt-free pleasure to punctuate difficult days.
对于数以百万计的人来说，无糖饮料提供了应对机制: 艰难的日子里时不时穿插着毫无负罪感的快乐时刻。
Before she became a historian, Carolyn de la Pea was working in corporate branding for a large soft drinks company in the US.
在成为一名历史学家之前，卡洛琳·德·拉·皮亚在美国一家大型软饮料公司从事企业品牌推广工作。
One of De la Pea’s assignments, as she describes in her book Empty Pleasures, was to interview “diet brand X loyalists” – mostly working women – who consumed between six and eight cans of diet fizzy drinks a day.
德·拉·皮亚在她的书《空虚的快乐》中描述，她的任务之一是采访“减肥品牌X的忠实拥护者”——大多数是职业女性——她们每天喝6到8罐无糖碳酸饮料。
De la Pea found that they all talked about how exhausted they were by their routines, whether it was the demands of childcare or the frustrations of jobs that were boring and low paid.
德·拉·皮亚发现，她们都在谈论日常生活让她们感到多么疲惫，无论是照顾孩子的需要，还是枯燥、低薪的工作带来的挫折。
These women “universally characterised the minutes when they consumed a Diet X as distinct from these routines … a little ‘treat’ that they could have without guilt, a brief period of time when the rest of the world would leave them alone”.
这些女性“普遍认为，她们吃Diet X的那几分钟与日常生活截然不同……这是她们可以毫无愧疚地享受的一点‘款待’，是世界上其他人都不会打扰她们的一小段时间”。
In 1977, when the FDA threatened to ban saccharin based on the evidence that it was carcinogenic in rats, it inspired an unprecedented letter-writing campaign from passionate saccharin fans, many of them Weight Watchers members.
1977年，由于有证据表明糖精对老鼠有致癌性，美国食品药品监督管理局威胁要禁用糖精，这激发了一场由狂热糖精粉丝发起的前所未有的写信运动，其中许多人是慧俪轻体的会员。
