You might not know how many calories were in that sandwich. But if you got lunch at the Massachusetts General Hospital cafeteria, you could tell with one glance whether you'd made a healthful choice: offerings are color-coded.
也许你并不知道那个三明治里含有多少卡路里。但如果你去马萨诸塞州总医院的自助餐厅吃午饭，你一眼就能辨别自己的选择对不对：供应的食物均标有彩色编码图。

Simply posting calories does not always get consumers to make healthier choices. So researchers tried something different.
仅仅只贴上卡路里含量的标签，并不能保证让消费者选择更健康的食物。因此研究者尝试了与众不同的做法。

Mass General's cafeteria food and beverage options were classified as least, somewhat or most healthful with red, yellow or green labels. Green is healthiest. Researchers then tracked some 4,600 employees.
麻省总医院自助餐厅对供应的食物和饮料做了最细的分类，比如说根据食品的健康程度分别贴上红色，黄色或者绿色的标签。绿色代表的食物最健康。然后研究者追踪了大约4600名雇员。

About six months after the changes were made, the purchases of "red" label food decreased by more than 15 percent, and "red" beverages dropped by 39 percent. "Green" food and drink purchases increased, according to the study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
发表在《美国预防医学期刊》上的一项研究表明，做出改变后的第六个月，贴有红色标签的食物销量减少了15%，“红色”的饮料销量减少了39%。“绿色”食物和饮料的购买量增加了。

Making healthy food choices easier could especially help the poor the undereducated, the very populations most affected by the obesity epidemic. Mass General employees from those groups made the biggest improvements.
让人们更容易得选择健康食物，尤其会帮助穷人，未受教育者以及受肥胖症影响最严重的人群。麻省总医院的这群员工做出了最大的改进。