来认识一下保卫美国番茄酱的人

来认识一下保卫美国番茄酱的人

My search for the secrets of American ketchup began in a sun-baked field near Los Banos, Calif.

我对美国番茄酱的秘密的探索始于加利福尼亚州洛斯巴诺斯附近一片阳光炙烤的田野。

The field didn't look like much at first. Just a wide, pale-green carpet of vines. Then Ross Siragusa, the head of global agriculture for the company Kraft Heinz, bent over, lifted up some of the vines, and revealed a mass of small, red fruit, too many to count.

一开始，这块地看起来并不怎么样。只是一大片淡绿色的藤蔓。接着，卡夫亨氏全球农业主管罗斯西拉格萨弯下腰，举起一些藤蔓，露出一大堆红色的小果子，多得数不清。

Each acre of this field, Siragusa tells me, will produce about 60 tons of tomatoes. That's up from about 40 tons per acre just 15 years ago. The tomatoes themselves are a mix of tomato varieties that are specially bred to produce red, thick ketchup.

西拉格萨告诉我，这片土地每英亩将生产大约60吨西红柿。这比15年前的每英亩40吨有所增加。西红柿本身就是各种西红柿的混合体，这些西红柿是专门为生产红色、粘稠的番茄酱而培育的。

A mechanical harvester approaches at the pace of a brisk walk. It's a giant machine, a factory on wheels. It collects a swath of tomato plants, shakes fruit loose from the vines, and sends a stream of bright red tomatoes into a big truck driving alongside. The scale and speed of the operation boggles the mind.

一台机械收割机以轻快的步伐走近。这是一台巨大的机器，一个有轮子的工厂。它收集了一长串西红柿植株，把藤蔓上的水果摇下来，然后把一串鲜红色的西红柿扔进旁边的一辆大卡车里。这次操作的规模和速度令人难以置信。

Within a day, a processing plant in Los Banos will turn these tomatoes into paste. Weeks or even months later, the paste will become the central ingredient in ketchup.

在一天之内，洛斯巴诺斯的一家加工厂将把这些西红柿变成酱。几周甚至几个月后，这种糊状物将成为番茄酱的主要成分。

Nothing in this scene, from the tomato varieties to the mechanical harvester, existed when the Heinz company created the classic version of American ketchup many decades ago. And I wonder, has ketchup's taste changed, too?

几十年前，当亨氏公司推出经典版的美国番茄酱时，从番茄品种到机械收获机，这一切都不存在。我在想，番茄酱的味道也变了吗?

Siragusa says that he doesn't know. But he knows somebody who would. A man named Hector Osorno. They call him the ketchup master, which is actually a formal title at Kraft Heinz. "He's completely obsessed [with ketchup]," Siragusa tells me. "He's got secrets that he won't divulge."

西拉格萨说他不知道。但他知道有人会这么做。一个叫赫克托·奥索尔诺的人。他们称他为番茄酱大师，这实际上是卡夫亨氏的一个正式头衔。“他完全痴迷于番茄酱，”西拉格萨告诉我。“他有些秘密是不会泄露的。”

A few hours later, I meet Osorno. He's smiling the way people do when they're hiding delightful secrets.

几个小时后，我遇见了奥索尔诺。他的微笑就像人们在隐藏令人愉快的秘密时那样。

"What makes you a ketchup master?" I ask him. "Is it your skill? Your knowledge?"

“是什么让你成为番茄酱大师?”我问他。“这是你的本事吗?”你的知识吗?”

"I like to think that it is my skill. But it's probably my stubbornness more than anything else," he says. "I'm obsessive to do the right thing the first time."

“我倾向于认为这是我的技能。但最重要的可能是我的固执，”他说。“我着迷于第一次就做正确的事情。”

Osorno grew up in Mexico, became an engineer, and started working at the Heinz company, now Kraft Heinz, more than 20 years ago. It's been all ketchup, all the time, ever since. He's in charge of making sure that each batch of Heinz ketchup comes out of the factory exactly as advertised.

奥索尔诺在墨西哥长大，成为一名工程师，并在20多年前开始在亨氏公司(现在的卡夫亨氏)工作。从那以后，一直都是（负责）番茄酱。他负责确保每一批亨氏番茄酱出厂时和广告上的一模一样。

I ask him my question about ketchup's taste. It's remained constant, Osorno assures me, although the Heinz recipe is slightly different in different countries. This created a minor crisis a few years ago, when the company had to come up with one version for all of Europe. Germans liked ketchup with more vinegar; the British version had always been spicier.

我问他关于番茄酱味道的问题。奥索诺向我保证，尽管亨氏的配方在不同的国家略有不同，但它万变不离其宗。几年前，这引发了一场小危机，当时该公司不得不为整个欧洲推出一个版本。德国人喜欢加醋的番茄酱;英国版一直更辣。

There was a time, Osorno tells me, when old-timers at Heinz thought that the taste of their American product was shifting a little. "They detected that something was changing, and adjusted accordingly," he says.

奥索尔诺告诉我，曾经有一段时间，亨氏的老前辈们认为他们美国产品的口味发生了一点变化。他说:“他们发现口味正在发生变化，并做出了相应的调整。”

He won't tell me exactly what they adjusted, of course. "For that I'd need a letter from the president of the company, co-signed by the legal counsel," he says, shaking with laughter.

当然，他不会告诉我他们调整了什么。“为此，我需要该公司总裁的一封信，由法律顾问共同签署，”他说，笑得浑身发抖。

For some people, ketchup is a symbol of the problems with American food. It's highly processed, mass-produced, and full of sugar. Historian Gabriella Petrick certainly saw it that way when she started digging into the archives of the H. J. Heinz Company.

对一些人来说，番茄酱是美国食物问题的象征。它经过高度加工，大量生产，富含糖分。当历史学家加布里埃拉·佩特里克开始研究亨氏公司的档案时，她肯定是这么看的。