“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？”这是克里斯托教授问她学生的问题。她后来写道，他们发现很难回答，因为想象一些不属于现实生活的部分并学习如何将其变成现实是一项罕见的技能。它是教给艺术家和工程师的，但很少教给科学家。克里斯托开始改变这一现状，并帮助创建了一项全球运动。因此，一种被称为系统思维的方法现在被视为应对全球挑战的关键。
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 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更好的营养等目标至关重要，因为它需要考虑粮食的生产、加工、交付和消费方式，并考虑这些因素与人类健康、环境、经济和社会的相互关系。根据系统思维，改变食物系统或任何其他网络需要发生三件事。首先，研究人员需要确定该系统中的所有参与者；其次，他们必须弄清楚彼此之间的关系；第三，他们需要理解和量化这些关系对彼此和系统外的影响。
Take nutrition. In the latest UN report on global food security, the number of undernourished 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.This shows that we have some way to travel before achieving the first objective of systems t hinking - which, in this example, is to identify more constituent parts of the nutrition system.
摄取营养。在联合国关于全球粮食安全的最新报告中，尽管营养科学取得了巨大进步，但世界上营养不良的人数一直在上升。对食物中150种生物化学物质的追踪对于揭示热量、糖、脂肪与常见疾病发生之间的关系至关重要。但利用机器学习和人工智能，一些科学家提出，人类饮食至少由26000种生物化学物质组成，而绝大多数生物化学物质尚不清楚。这表明，在实现系统思考的第一个目标之前，我们还有一段路要走，在这个例子中，这就是识别营养系统的更多组成部分。
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 such power imbalance is for more universities to do what Crystal did and teach students how to think using a systems approach.
创造变革的系统方法也建立在系统中每个人都拥有平等权力的假设之上。但正如一些研究人员发现的那样，食物系统并不是一个平等的系统。纠正这种权力失衡的一个好方法是让更多的大学像克里斯托那样，教学生如何使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、政策制定者和食品行业代表必须学会超越他们的直接责任线，采取系统的方法。克里斯托知道仅靠愿景是无法产生结果的，但他结论是：“我们永远不会产生我们无法想象的结果”。
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