“What would the world be if there were no hunger?” It’s a question that Professor Crystal would ask her students. They found it hard to answer, she wrote later, because imagining something that isn’t part of real life—and learning how to make it real—is a rare skill. It is taught to artists and engineers, but much less often to scientists. Crystal set out to change that, and helped to create a global movement. The result—an approach known as systems thinking—is now seen as essential in meeting global challenges.
“如果没有饥饿，世界会是什么样子？”这是Crystal教授会问她的学生们的一个问题。

Systems thinking is crucial to achieving targets such as zero hunger and better nutrition because it requires considering the way in which food is produced, processed, delivered and consumed, and looking at how those things intersect ( 交叉 ) with human health, the environment, economics and society. According to systems thinking, changing the food system—or any other network—requires three things to happen. First, researchers need to identify all the players in that system; second, they must work out how they relate to each other; and third, they need to understand and quantify the impact of those relationships on each other and on those outside the system.
系统思维对于实现零饥饿和改善营养非常关键，因为它要求考虑食品如何生产、加工、运送和消费，并研究这些方面与人类健康、环境、经济和社会是如何交叉的。根据系统思维，改变食品系统或其他任何网络需要三个步骤。首先，研究人员需要确定系统中的所有参与者；其次，他们必须弄清这些参与者如何相互关联；最后，他们需要理解并量化这些关联对彼此和系统外部的影响。

Take nutrition. In the latest UN report on global food security, the number of undernourished (营养不良) people in the world has been rising, despite great advances in nutrition science. Tracking of 150 biochemicals in food has been important in revealing the relationships between calories, sugar, fat and the occurrence of common diseases. But using machine learning and artificial intelligence, some scientists propose that human diets consist of at least 26,000 biochemicals—and that the vast majority are not known.
最新的联合国全球粮食安全报告显示，尽管营养科学取得了巨大进步，全球营养不良的人数仍在上升。

A systems approach to creating change is also built on the assumption that everyone in the system has equal power. But as some researchers find, the food system is not an equal one. A good way to redress ( 修正 ) such power imbalance is for more universities to do what Crystal did and teach students how to think using a systems approach.
建立变革的系统方法也建立在一个假设上，即系统中的每个人都拥有平等的权力。但正如一些研究人员发现的那样，食品系统并不是一个平等的系统。为了纠正这种权力失衡，许多大学应该效仿Crystal的做法，教导学生如何运用系统方法进行思考。
More researchers, policymakers and representatives from the food industry must learn to look beyond their direct lines of responsibility and adopt a systems approach. Crystal knew that visions alone don’t produce results, but concluded that “we’ll never produce results that we can’t envision”.
更多的研究人员、政策制定者和来自食品行业的代表必须超越他们直接的责任范围，采用系统方法。Crystal明白，单凭愿景是无法产生结果的，但总结说“我们永远不会创造出我们无法设想的结果”。

28．The author uses the question underlined in Paragraph 1 to __.
A．illustrate an argument B．highlight an opinion
C．introduce the topic D．predict the ending
答案：C

29．What can be inferred about the field of nutrition?
A．The first objective of systems thinking hasn’t been achieved.
B．The relationships among players have been clarified.
C．Machine learning can solve the nutrition problem.
D．The impact of nutrition cannot be quantified.
答案：A

30．As for systems thinking, which would the author agree with?
A．It may be used to justify power imbalance.
B．It can be applied to tackle challenges.
C．It helps to prove why hunger exists.
D．It goes beyond human imagination.
答案：B