On the way home from the grocery, you get delayed so much that the frozen meat you’ve bought thaws out. The question for this Moment of Science is should you refreeze it? We’ve been told by reliable authorities that it’s not good to refreeze uncooked meat. Why not? If freezing the meat in the first place helps preserve it, why doesn’t this work the second time around? The answer to this question lies in the fact that all food has some bacteria in it, but normally not enough to hurt us. We freeze uncooked meat so that bacteria will not grow in it. But freezing does not kill all the bacteria that are already there, it just puts them in a kind of suspended animation. When the meat is thawed the bacteria come back to life and begin reproducing.

【生詞注釋】
Delayed adj.延時的, 拖延的

thaw out 融化

refreeze v. 再次冰凍

uncooked adj. 未煮過的

bacteria n.細菌

suspended animation 暫停生長

reproduce v.繁殖

【參考譯文】
從商店回家的路上，你的行程延誤了，因為你剛買的冷凍肉開始融化。這今天的《科學時刻》的問題是我們是否應該再次冷凍肉？權威人士已經告我們再次冷凍肉，這種做法并不好。為什么呢？如果第一次冷凍肉能保存肉，為什么第二次冷凍就不行呢？問題的答案在于所有食物中都有細菌，但是細菌的數量還不至于傷害我們。我們將未煮過的肉冷凍，那樣里面的細菌都不會生長。但是冷凍并不會殺死里面所有的細菌，只是抑制細菌暫停生長。當凍肉開始融化時，細菌又復活了，重新開始繁殖。