Antioxidant Use Still Small Mixed Bag
抗氧化补剂的作用仍不明确

At a Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health forum on diet and health, Walter Willett, chair of the school's nutrition department, talked about benefits and risks associated with antioxidant supplements
在哈佛T. H. 陈公共健康学院的饮食与健康论坛上，华特·威力特(Walter Willett ) ，学院营养系的主任，讲述与抗氧化补剂相关的益处和风险。

撰文/播音 史蒂夫·米尔斯基 (Steve Mirsky)
翻译 Meatle
审校 邰伦玥

Are you gobbling up antioxidants as part of your diet and nutrition regimen? The benefits may be, well…
你是否将服用抗氧化剂作为你饮食养生中的一环呢？服用抗氧化剂的好处嘛…

“It seems surprising, but even after several decades we don’t have a clear answer, there’s not, if there were really across-the-board powerful benefits we would have seen it, and that’s not the situation.”
“这听上去可能有些吓人，即使经过数十年的时间，我们仍然无法给出明确的答案，如果确实有多方面且明显的好处，我们应该会注意到，而事实并不是这样，我们无法找到令人折服的证据。”

Walter Willett. He chairs the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He spoke at a January 15th forum on Cancer and Diet that wound up touching on diet and health in general.  
华特·威力特 (Walter Willett) ，他是哈佛T. H. 陈公共健康学院 (Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health) 营养学系的主任，他在1月15日关于癌症与饮食的论坛上讲话。这次论坛主要讨论了饮食和健康的问题。

“The studies so far, randomized trials that have been done, don’t show much benefit. There was actually a surprising increase in lung cancer with beta-carotene, one of the antioxidants, in people who smoked and were heavy drinkers, although there was no increase in risk in people…who were generally pretty healthy to start with. So even the randomized trials give different answers…I think…that antioxidants are not a magic solution to cancer or other diseases, but there probably are some benefits. One example is that in a physicians health study randomized trial over 12 years, at the end of that period of time those taking beta-carotene had better cognitive function than people on placebo—a really interesting and potentially important finding.”
“到目前为止，关于抗氧化剂，各种研究完成了大量的随机性实验，但都没有证实它有很多好处。对于吸烟与酗酒的人群，确实有证据证实beta-胡萝卜素，一种抗氧化剂，能够减少肺癌的风险；但对于普遍的健康人群，beta-胡萝卜素与肺癌的关联性并不明显。因此，即使经过随机性实验，我们也不能给出统一的结果。我认为，抗氧化剂对于癌症或是其他疾病并没有神奇的功用，但可能稍有一点好处。比如，一个内科医生所主导的为期12年的研究的结果显示，在实验结束时，持续服用了12年beta-胡萝卜素的参与者，比服用安慰剂的参照组具有更高的认知能力。这确实是一个有趣而有潜力的发现。”

So antioxidants may provide some benefits to some people. 
因此抗氧化剂可能会为一些人带来益处。

“But even if there are, that’s only a small part of the changes that we need to make in diet and lifestyle to reduce our risk of cancers…there are so many other things that are quite well documented.”
“然而，即使抗氧化剂有效，那也只是我们为了减少患上癌症的风险所需做出的饮食与生活方式上的改变中很小的一部分…另外有太多已经被充分证实的习惯需要被改变。”

The entire hour-long forum featuring Willett and other researchers discussing diet and health is archived online. Just google “Harvard public health forum”.
威力特与他的同事关于饮食与健康的完整一个小时的录音能在网上获取，请谷歌搜索“Harvard public health forum”。