By Alastair Little

　　-国华树春译注

　　难以想象，剑桥大学的学生毕业后竟有人下海下到饭馆，甘心情愿当一名厨师。本文作者Alastair Little就是一个，而且他当得很成功，很自在，现在伦敦拥有两家餐馆，既是老板，又是大厨，在英国颇有名气，常在电视上抛头露面，指点饮食。让我们听一听他对21世纪的吃有何高见。

　　My biggest hope for the new millennium is that there will be a reaction against<注1> diets and food fads<注2> though frankly I can't see it happening. My New Year wish would be for the word "Lite"<注3> to disappear from the English language. Or better still<注4> for all diets<注5> sold<注6> in books at airports to prove to be fatal<注7> so their authors got sued for<注8> millions in the American courts.

　　Such diets are pernicious.<注9> We're already seeing malnourished children in wealthy LA<注10> suburbs, and cases of child anorexia<注11> and eating problems are increasingly being linked to<注12> parental neuroses<注13> rather than media images. Perhaps in the next century we'll learn that if you want to lose weight, you simply need to eat less—and that in general food is good for you. If you eat sensibly,<注14> you will stay healthy.

　　Cooking has already become a leisure activity in Britain—look at all those television programmes.<注15> I do think we will be eating out more and more in restaurants, as a regular event<注16> more in the French style<注17> than<注18> for some special social occasion.<注19> And I hope good cooking<注20> in Britain will spread to all levels. It is already happening to an extent through pubs, though there is still a long way to go:<注21> good food in Britain is currently not very democratic.<注22>

　　As for what we eat—well, some of the sci-fi<注23> books that predicted that we would all be slurping<注24> Japanese noodles have proved to be not too far from the truth.<注25> I think we will see pan-Eurasian<注26> foods becoming much more popular in the next century. As for GM<注27> foods, I am scared of them because if their strains<注28> should prove to be virulent<注29> they could do untold<注30> damage to the environment. On the other hand, people have been mucking about with<注31> plants for a very long time already. Look at wine<注32>—it is cloned, there is no sexual reproduction involved,<注33> and so it is purely the result of artifice,<注34> technology. So maybe we shouldn't worry so much—we are just doing more of the same.

　　(From CAM: Cambridge Alumni Magazine, No.28,1999)