2015英语四级卷二真题
四、长篇阅读
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
How to Eat Well
A) Why do so many Americans eat tons of processed food, the stuff that is correctly called junk(垃圾) and should really carry warning labels?
B) It’s not because fresh ingredients are hard to come by Supermarkets offer more variety than ever, and there are over four times as many famers’ markets in the U.S. as there were 20 years ago. Nor is it for lack of available information. There are plenty of recipes(食谱), how-to videos and cooking classes available to anyone who has a computer, smartphone or television. If anything the information is overwhelming.
C) And yet we aren’t cooking. If you eat three meals a day and behave like most Americans, you probably get at least a third of your daily calories(卡路里) outsides the home. Nearly two-thirds of us grab fast food once a week, and we get almost 25% of our daily calories from snacks. So we’re eating out or taking in, and we don’t sit down—or we do, but hurry.
D) Shouldn’t preparing—and consuming—food be a source of comfort, pride, health, well-being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to other humans? Why should we want to outsource(外包) this basic task, especially when outsourcing it is so harmful?
E) When I talk about cooking,I’m not talking about creating elaborate dinner parties or three-day science projects. I’m talking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage green hands and those lacking time or money to feed themselves. That means we need modest, realistic expectation, and we need to teach people to cook food that’s good enough to share with family and friends.
F) Perhaps a return to real cooking needn’t be far off. A recent Harris poll revealed that 79% of Americans say they enjoy cooking and 30% “love it”; 14% admit to not enjoying kitchen work and just 7% won’t go near the stove at all. But this doesn’t necessarily translate to real cooking and the result of this survey shouldn’t surprise anyone; 52% of those 65 or older cook at home five or more times per week; only a third of young people do.
G) Back in the 1950s most of us grew up in households where Mom cooked virtually every night. The intention to put a home-cooked meal on the table was pretty much universal. Most people couldn’t afford to do otherwise.
H) Although frozen dinners were invented in the 40s, their popularity didn’t boom until televisions became popular a decade or so later. Since then packaged, pre-prepared meals have been what’s for dinner. The microwave and fast-food chains were the biggest catalysts(催化剂),but the big food companies—which want to sell anything except the raw ingredients that go into cooking—made the home cook an endangered species.
I) Still, I find it strange that only a third of young people report preparing meals at home regularly. Isn’t this the same crowd that rails against processed junk and champions craft cooking?And isn’t this the generation who say they’re concerned about their health and the wee-being of the planet? If these are truly the values of many young people, then tier behavior doesn’t match their beliefs.
J) There have been half-hearted but well-publicized efforts by some food campaigns to reduce calories in their processed foods, but the Standard American Diet is still the polar opposite of the healthy, mostly plant-based diet that just about every expert says we should be eating. Considering that the governments standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture is clear: by nor cooking at home, we’re not eating the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate.
K) To help quantify(量化) the costs of a poor diet, I recently tried to estimate this impact in terms of a most famous food, the burger(汉堡包). I concluded that the profit from burgers is more than offset(抵消) by the damage they cause in health problems and environmental harm.
L) Cooking real food is the best defense —not to mention that any meal you’re likely to eat at home contains about 200 fewer calories than one you would cat in a restaurant.
M) To those Americans for whom money is a concern, my advice is simple; Buy what you can afford, and cook it yourself. The common prescription is to primarily shop the grocery store, since that’s where fresh produce, meat and seafood, and dairy are. And to save money and still eat well you don’t need local organic ingredients; all you need is real food. I’m not saying local food isn’t better, it is. But there is plenty of decent food in the grocery stores.