文本导读
Infant formula: the superfood you never think about
婴儿配方奶粉：你没想过的超级食物
Baby formula has been front-page news in the United States lately, as the closure of one of the nation's largest manufacturing plants due to contamination has sparked a serious shortage.
婴儿配方奶粉最近一直是美国的头版新闻，因为美国最大的制造工厂之一因污染问题而被关停，导致婴儿配方奶粉严重短缺。
As the US Food and Drug Administration seeks new sources of infant formula abroad, flies in emergency supplies and tries to help get the plant back up and running, parents are struggling to get what they need to feed their babies.
美国食品和药物管理局在海外寻找婴儿配方奶粉的新来源，空运紧急物资，并试图帮助工厂恢复运转，与此同时，父母们正在努力获取喂养他们宝贝所需的东西。
The situation is shocking — for one thing, it raises questions about why anything as essential as formula is vulnerable to the woes of any single manufacturer — and it has made many people curious about what parents did in the past, before huge companies made the product that has become a lynchpin in so many lives.
这一情况令人震惊——首先，它引发了人们的疑问：为什么像配方奶粉这样必不可少的东西会因为仅一家制造商出问题而受到影响——这让许多人好奇，在大公司生产对很多人来说是关键产品的奶粉之前，父母们过去是怎么喂养孩子的。
重点词汇
1. formula /ˈfɔː.mjə.lə/ a type of milk that can be given to babies instead of milk from their mother 配方奶
- If breastfeeding is not possible, parents feed their infants artificially with infant formula .
2. contamination /kənˌtæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ the process of making something dirty or poisonous, or the state of containing unwanted or dangerous substances 污染
- The water supply is being tested for contamination .
3. essential /ɪˈsen.ʃəl/ necessary or needed 必不可少的
- Water is essential for living things.
4. woe /wəʊ/ big problems or troubles 问题
- The country has been beset by economic woes for the past decade.
5. lynchpin /ˈlɪntʃ.pɪn/ a person or thing that is the most important part of a group or system’s operation 关键
- Consumer spending is the lynchpin of the economy.
延伸阅读
Unfortunately, today's parents are far from the first people in history to have to deal with this problem. The first widely marketed infant formula arrived in the 1860s, but people have been trying to find safe alternatives to breastmilk for millennia.
不幸的是，今天的父母远不是历史上第一批不得不面对这个问题的人。第一波广泛销售的婴儿配方奶粉出现在19世纪60年代，但几千年来，人们一直在努力寻找安全的母乳替代品。
Before modern medicine, babies died all the time, for all sorts of reasons. But if the baby and the mother could not get enough milk out of the breast, it was often a shortcut to the grave for the infant, because the alternatives were not great.
在现代医学出现之前，婴儿总是会因为各种原因而死亡。如果婴儿和母亲无法获得足够的母乳，往往会加快婴儿走向死亡的步伐，因为并没有更好的替代品。
In the early 19th Century, poor hygiene of feeding vessels and unsafe animal milk storage led to the deaths of a third of babies fed by bottle.
在19世纪早期，不洁的喂奶器和不安全的动物奶储存方法导致三分之一用奶瓶喂养的婴儿死亡。