老外说——民以食为天，聊聊食品的安全问题

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【老外说】是一档以“采访”老外为主的节目，帮助大家更好的了解中西文化差异，一窥英国人、美国人日常生活。每周一更新。本栏目适合精听/泛听。可做听写练习。

老话说“民以食为天”，对舌尖上的安全问题，人们都越来越在意，今天采访到的这位“老外”也不例外，我们一起来听听吧！

Gwen

Do you think it's better to live in Cambodia than in America?

As far as the cost of living wise, it's definitely a lot more affordable here in Cambodia. For me, one of the main factors is able to have the quality of the food. Because here is a lot warmer. So there's a lot more accessibility for natural…like grass-finished beef, as opposed to the conventional farming that's in America. That’s just all about commercialize agriculture and a lot of feedlot (饲养场) beef. So the quality of food here is definitely higher, based on my opinion. It all depends on where you get it as well. If you get the imported beef from Thailand, those are all grain-fed as well. They're fed using corn and other stuff like that. But it's not as bad as In America. I don't know if you were familiar with this. But due to the pandemic, the sudden cut off the food supply, the big cattle industry, they had to just slaughter all of their cattle.

Gwen

Really?

Yes. They just had to give it a shot to just kill it because the way that they were raising it was so unnatural. And it was costing them more money to keep those cattle alive because of all the medicines and all the feed and antibiotic that was required to keep them alive and they weren't able to source it. And fast enough, it was just more profitable to just kill all the cattle than to keep them alive. So it just goes to show you how far we've gone from what is natural.

And it's kind of ironic because now the restaurants are starting to open up again, there's actually been parts of the market. They actually start importing beef from Mexico instead, because they're just chasing the money like dog chasing its tail.

Gwen

You do care about food safety.

Yeah, I definitely stand by the phrase “let thy food be thy medicine (以食为药)”. So I think it's very important like the food and the quality of it, the stuff that we put inside our body. It's what makes us who we are and what keeps us healthy and happy.

Gwen

So when did you start to concern those issues? I mean that started when you start to workout?

Yeah. When I was still in school just from a very early age, I’ve always been very active and athletic. When I was in high school, I started to lift weights. And it sort of became a passion of mine. And so I eventually decided to go to school and to study nutrition and exercise science. A lot of the things that they taught me was it could be a little bit controversial, cause I'm sure you're familiar with the standard American diet, which is like 70% carbohydrates (碳水), a lot of bread, pasta, grains, and all these things.

That’s what they taught me when I was going to school. But as I continue to look into it more and more, I found that what is a very popular diet now is called a ketogenic diet (生酮饮食). Have you heard about that?

Gwen

Yeah.

So keto is taken the internet by storm. And although it's not perfect, I personally subscribe to something more of indeed an indigenous (当地的), like a natural diet base. It's more like a diet based on the indigenous people‘s culture, like people used to eat--mainly a lot of animal products, but at the same time, it depends on the quality of those animal products. The most healthy stuff that you can be eating is while like wild-caught salmon. Salmon roe (鱼子) is a superfood. The nutritional density of it is just super high compared to the amount of calories that it has.

Gwen

How about chicken?

Chicken is good too, but it depends on how you raise it. Chicken eggs are super healthy. The yogurt has every vitamin and nutrient that a human being needs.