Eat Slowly and Breathe Smoothly to Enhance Taste
细咽慢嗅更美味
Slow, steady breathing lofts minute food particles into the nasal cavity, where they contribute to your perception of flavor. Christopher Intagliata reports
缓慢而稳定的呼吸使到微小的食物分子被送至鼻腔，在那里，这些分子让你有了味觉感知
撰文/播音 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔（Christopher Inglista）
翻译 M
审核：邰伦玥
Ever lose your ability to taste during a cold, because your nose is stuffed up? That's because the nose is intimately involved with taste. When you chew, volatile flavor compounds from the food get lofted toward the back of your mouth. And when you exhale you carry some of those flavor compounds up into your nasal cavity, where they hit olfactory receptors.
你可曾有过这样的感觉：感冒的时候，由于鼻子被堵住了，于是吃什么都索然无味了？那是因为鼻子与味觉密切相关。当你咀嚼时，挥发性的风味分子被运送到口腔的后部。而在呼气的时候，一部分这些分子被送到鼻腔，并激发了气味感受器。
"As children we basically learn, the first lesson of table manners is to keep the mouth closed while chewing, and you also want to breathe smoothly." Rui Ni, a mechanical engineer at Penn State. "I think not only because it's courteous, but you can also smell the food much better if you breathe smoothly."
“我们小时候都学过，关于餐桌礼仪最基本的第一课就是咀嚼地时候闭上嘴巴，同时顺畅地呼吸。”来自宾州州立大学的机械工程师倪睿如是说。“我认为那不单是因为礼仪问题，还有一个原因是在你呼吸顺畅的时候，你能更好的感受到食物的味道。”
The backdoor by which smell contributes to taste is called "retronasal olfaction." And it turns out our airways are exquisitely tuned to enhance that effect.
气味转换为味觉的“后门”被称为“鼻后气味受体”。而我们的气道则能很敏锐地强化这种感受作用。
Ni and his colleagues 3D-printed a model of a woman's airway, using a CT scan as a template. To track airflow, they laced water with fluorescent particles and pumped it through the apparatus, filming the results. They found that when you breathe in, that inward airflow actually forms a curtain at the back of your mouth, blocking food particles from getting into the lungs--a good thing. And when you exhale, air swirls through that cavity in the back of the mouth, sweeping up those volatile particles and delivering them right to the nasal cavity, where you can smell them. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Rui Ni (倪睿) et al,Optimal directional volatile transport in retronasal olfaction]
倪睿和她的同僚使用一个CT扫描结果作为模板，3D打印了一位女性的气道模型。为了追踪流动状况，他们将加有荧光分子的水泵入模型，并拍摄水流过设备的过程。他们发现当吸气时，吸取的气流在口腔后部形成帘状，从而阻挡了食物分子进入肺部——这是好事情。而当呼气时，气旋通过口腔后部的空洞，卷走那些挥发性分子并正好将它们送到鼻腔，从而让人能感知味道。研究结果发表在《美国科学院论文集》。
There is a way to derail this well-tuned system: the effect's ruined if you're really huffing and puffing. Meaning if you're wolfing down your food, gasping for air, that turbulent breathing actually delivers more of those food molecules into your lungs and less up into the nasal cavity. In other words, your mother was right all along: keep your mouth shut and don’t bolt your food. It’ll cut the chances of choking, and enhance the taste of the meal.
当然，有方法会打乱这种精妙的系统：若你真的气喘吁吁，这种作用会被摧毁。这意味着如果狼吞虎咽，喘不过气，那混乱的呼吸会将更多的食物分子送到你的肺部而不是鼻腔。换句话说，你的母亲一直是正确的：吃饭的时候闭上嘴巴、不要匆匆吞下你的食物。那不但能免去咽着的风险，还会使饭菜更有味道。
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