①Do you know digital pickled vegetables? Recently, this new type of pickle (榨菜) is being discussed. It refers to the videos people watch while eating. Many people think that the videos can make their food more appetizing (有食欲的), just like a spoonful of pickles sometimes making a meal taste much better.

②The topic received more than 16 million clicks on Sina Weibo and about 100, 000 people joined in the discussion. Instead of having meals with friends and family members, many young people in China are kept company by TV shows or short videos. Many believe that their food is tastier with the “digital pickles”.

③Can this habit affect your diet? According to a research paper published in 2019, you may eat more without knowing it. The international research team asked 62 volunteers to follow different eating patterns on four different days. The patterns included eating while looking at the mobile phone, reading magazines and without distraction (干扰). After analyzing (分析) their diets, the team discovered that eating with a distraction increased caloric ingestion (卡路里摄入) by about 15 percent.

④To find out the reason, the team also invited two groups of people: one group ate while listening to an audio clip (音频剪辑) about another person eating and the other listened to a clip that helped them imagine themselves eating. The results showed that the second group ate less since they were more focused on their meals. When we eat with the “digital pickles”, our attention can be distracted, which leads to eating more than expected.

⑤Not only videos and audios but also other tasks can work as digital pickles. A research project led by the University of Sussex, UK, pointed out that activities which require lots of attention trick many participants into overeating. The team invited 120 participants to do various tasks while providing them with drinks and snacks. “Our study suggests that if you’re eating or drinking while your attention is distracted by a highly engaging task, you’re less likely to be able to tell how full you feel,” one of the authors Martin Yeomans explained.

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Food for thought?

VEGANS

Vegans are vegetarians: they don’t eat fish or meat. However, most vegetarians eat eggs, cheese and other dairy products, but vegans don’t. In fact, they don’t eat any food from animals — eggs and honey, for example. Why do people become vegans? Usually, they believe that it’s wrong to kill animals for food or keep them for milk, eggs, and other products. They also believe that keeping animals is bad for the environment because it needs a lot of space. A small farm with animals can produce food for 20 people; but use the same land for vegetables and it can feed 240 people. Farm animals are also bad for the environment because they need a lot of water.

FRUITARIANS

Fruitarians are vegans: they don’t eat meat, fish or any other animal products. But there are other rules too. Fruitarians don’t cook their food and they don’t eat any vegetables, rice, bread or processed food. So what can they eat? Well, nuts(坚果) and seeds are OK. They can eat sweet fruit, like bananas and apples, and also olives, peppers and tomatoes because these are fruit too. Some people are fruitarians because they believe it is healthy. However, most doctors believe that fruitarians do not have a balanced diet(饮食). The human body needs something which isn’t in fruit or nuts.