UNIT 2 第二单元 衣食住行

Lesson 5 Food and Obesity

Being fat is becoming the norm for Americans. As it will soon become in this country, I have seen the future, and it's extra large.

By Joan Smith

A FRIEND WHO happens to be both American and a superb cook—his poulet de Bresse en deuil1is one of the most memorable dishes I have tasted—called me a couple of days ago, enthusing about a lecture he had just attended. The thesis, he said, was that the human body has changed irrevocably over the last quarter of a century and that the physical environment—chairs, beds, airline seats—will gradually adapt to accommodate the new shape. It is, of course, in the US, where my friend no longer lives, that this evolutionary experiment is most advanced; for years now, millions of people have been gorging themselves on vast helpings of fast food2, with the consequence that about 60 per cent of the population is overweight.

According to Greg Critser, author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World3, none of this has happened by accident. Critser argues that the challenge to the US food industry in the 1970s was that the population was growing more slowly than the food supply, so people had to be persuaded to change their eating habits. Fast food, invented after the Second World War as an affordable way of getting families to eat together, became a means of selling surplus fat and sugar to the far-from-unwilling masses. This is a social revolution on a grand scale as scarcity, with which most human beings have had to struggle throughout history, has given way to an apparently permanent state of plenty.

It may also help to explain why the magician David Blaine, suspended without food in a Perspex box beside Tower Bridge, has such a grip on people's imaginations.4In an astonishingly short period of time, starvation has metamorphosed from a threat to a spectacle, and families are turning out en masse at weekends to see how his hunger strike is going.5For the fifth of the British population who

are obese, and unused to doing without food for more than a few hours, the notion of someone giving it up for 44 days is unthinkable; some normal-size people have turned up to mock, throwing eggs, cooking food and even trying to cut off the water supply to the hungry American. Perhaps this is the point, that there are so few starving Americans in the world, which makes his self-imposed ordeal appear ludicrously self-indulgent.6

Yet it is possible to take Critser's argument a stage further and suggest that millions of Americans are trapped between two industries, fast food and slimming, which enjoy a cosily symbiotic relationship.7Research by a fast-food chain showed that what customers cared about was neither taste nor quality but portion size; what they have come to expect from food, and what their neighbours are beginning to want as well—obesity has increased by 158 per cent in Mexico in a decade, since fast food outlets8began to replace the traditional diet—is a feeling of being stuffed to the gills9. Cooking has become a spectator sport10, something to watch famous people do on telly, as the populations of affluent countries rely increasingly on supermarket meals and takeaways. For many people, eating has become an addiction rather than a pleasure, and going on a diet merely replaces one morbid habit with another.11

In the circumstances, it is not really surprising that people are confused and angered by Blaine, whose stunt highlights the disordered relation to eating which has become habitual in Western societies. Far from being an object of derision as his body enters ketosis, the state in which it starts to consume itself, he should logically be the envy of all those individuals who are endlessly trying Atkins and other fashionable diets.12We are so used to hearing people go on about the cabbage soup diet or modified Atkins that it is easy to overlook the extraordinary fact that we live in a culture in which people pay to get hungry, turning the condition of starving Africans into a longed-for luxury. There is something shaming about this, and about the extent to which so many people—like Kafka's hunger artist13, who was addicted to starving—have lost control of their appetites.

Perhaps the thesis my friend described to me on the phone is correct, and houses and cars and planes will just have to get bigger as the human race—the affluent part of it, that is—continues to inflate itself with empty calories. Bizarrely, being fat is fast becoming the norm for Americans, and even in this country it will soon be people like me (5ft 5in and a paltry nine stone14) who are the freaks. I have seen the future, and it's extra large.

PLAIN FOOD MOVES UP A CLASS15

I WAS SUPPOSED to give a talk myself at the weekend, on food and class, but had to pull out because of an annoyingly persistent throat virus. I was going to discuss “eating above your station”, which is something I learnt to do, like many people of my generation, when I went to university. Until then, I had scarcely ever eaten in a restaurant and I had never tried what my family referred to as “foreign muck”. Even macaroni cheese was too exotic for my parents, who tipped it into the bin when I came home from cookery class with a Pyrex dish full of overcooked pasta and melted cheddar.16

Food was plain, served on a plate with thick portions of gravy or custard, and the idea of helping yourself from serving dishes seemed the height of sophistication. What strikes me now, looking back on that traditional working-class diet, is that it was unadventurous but it didn't do me any harm. My father grew vegetables, my mother shelled peas and sliced carrots, and I don't recall anyone in my family being overweight. It's hard to eat too much when someone else puts the food on your plate. These days, if a working-class diet can be said to exist, it is superficially much more cosmopolitan—curries, pizzas, the ubiquitous Chinese takeaway—but adapted to satisfy the British appetite for saturated fat17, salt and sugar.

In a curious reversal, plain food—simple grilled fish with a green salad, such as the wonderful meal I ate in Marbella in the summer—has become the province of the middle class.18I am one of those lucky people who changed class at the right time and in the right direction, but the effects of our eating habits—a slender elite, as millions of ordinary people pile on the pounds—suggest that class divisions are as deep as ever19.

BRING ON THE EURO

I WAS DRIVING back from a health farm20the other day when the friend with whom I had just shared three days of massage, facials and Pilates said rather nervously that she wanted to ask me a question. I naturally assumed that she wanted to talk about men, underwear or the least painful way of shaving your legs, as women do when they know each other well, but it turned out to be something far more intimate. Am I, she asked, in favour of joining the euro?

Oh God, anything but that. Admitting that you feel no attachment to the pound, and would like to use the euro in Waitrose21, is like telling your friends that you have joined a weird sect. I don't think people spend much time thinking about Gordon Brown's five economic tests22, but there is a presumption that the British did jolly well to stay out of the eurozone when all those foreigners gave up their currencies almost two years ago. And now we're supposed to admire the Swedes for resoundingly voting “No”at the weekend.

I don't think I've ever confessed this in public before, and I suspect I won't be invited to any smart parties for weeks at the very least.23But I really want to join the euro. And since we both came out somewhere on the M124—it was a relief, I can tell you—I now know at least one other person who feels the same.

From The Times, September 18, 2003

I. New Words

accommodate [əˈkɔmədeit] v. to provide enough space for sb

affluent [ˈæfluənt] adj. having a lot of money and a good living standard

bin [bin] n. 垃圾箱

bizarrely [biˈzɑːli] adv. very strangely, unusually

calorie [ˈkæləri] n. 卡路里

cookery [ˈkukəri] n. the art or practice of preparing food

cosily [ˈkəuzili] adv. comfortably

cosmopolitan [ˌkɔzməˈpɔlitən] adj. 世界性的，全球（各地）的

curry [ˈkʌri] n. 咖喱菜肴

custard [ˈkʌstəd] n. 奶油蛋糕，奶油沙司

derision [diˈriʒən] n. 嘲笑

enthuse [inˈθjuːz] v. to talk in an enthusiastic way

eurozone [ˈjuərəuzəun] n. 欧元区

exotic [igˈzɔtik] adj. foreign; intriguingly unusual or different

facial [ˈfeiʃəl] n. 面部按摩

freak [friːk] n. a person considered unusual

gorge [gɔːdʒ] v. gorge oneself to eat a lot of food

gravy [ˈgreivi] n. 肉汁，肉汤

grill [gril] v. 烧烤

helping [ˈhelpiŋ] n. a single portion of food

irrevocably [iˈrevəkəbli] adv. 不能取消地，不能撤回地

ketosis [kiˈtəusis] n. 酮症（体内酮体生成过多）

mock [mɔk] v. to laugh at sb in an unkind way

muck [mʌk] n. 垃圾

obese [əuˈbiːs] adj. extremely fat; grossly overweight

outlet [ˈautlit] n. a passage for escape or exit; a vent

Perspex [ˈpəːspeks] n. 珀思佩有机玻璃（商标名称）

resoundingly [riˈzaundiŋli] adv. 轰动地，成功地

scarcity [ˈskεəsəti] n. insufficiency, shortage

shell [ʃel] v. 剥……的壳

slimming [ˈslimiŋ] n. 减肥，减食

stunt [stʌnt] n. 惊人的表演；惊险动作

takeaway [ˈteikəˌwei] n. 外卖饭菜

telly [ˈteli] n. BrE informal television

tip [tip] v. to dump

ubiquitous [juːˈbikwitəs] adj. seeming to be everywhere; very common

virus [ˈvaiərəs] n. 病毒

weird [wiəd] adj. very strange and difficult to explain

II. Background Information

饮食与肥胖

肥胖已经成为全球性的严重问题。世界卫生组织发布的统计结果表明，全球目前至少有10亿成年人超重，3亿人肥胖。除美国、英国、德国这些传统“胖国”，亚非国家的肥胖人数也在猛增。据最新统计，美国是发达国家中肥胖和超重人口最多的国家。世界卫生组织（WHO）所定的体重标准，也是美国常用的体重检测标准是BMI（Body Mass Index体重指数）。这种标准的计算公式是：体重（公斤数）÷[身高（米数）2]，得数在18.5—25之间为理想体重；得数在25—29.9之间为超重（overweight）；得数在30以上为肥胖（obese）。按照这套标准，21世纪初美国人中有2/3超重，其中一半是肥胖者。密西西比州超过三成的人太胖，而全美平均最苗条的科罗拉多州，胖子数也占了18.7%。

人们普遍认为，肥胖和饮食文化是分不开的。从美国的快餐业（fast food industry）的发达就可以看出美国人对快餐的偏爱。在美国的公共场所到处可见可乐饮料和零食自动售货机，使得美国人在看电视、看电影、看球赛以及在其他闲暇时间里吃零食、喝可乐和加糖饮料变得越来越方便。这些快捷的食品都是高热能食品。缺少运动是肥胖的一个重要原因。美国是一个以车代步的国家（a country on wheels），从车库到车库的生活和高科技的发展让越来越多的人缺少运动。正是这种高热量摄入（high calories in）和低热量消耗（low calories out），导致超重（overweight）和肥胖病（obesity）。

伴随肥胖而来的是健康危机。心脏病（heart disease）、糖尿病（diabetes）、高血压（high blood pressure）和中风（apoplexy）都是一些常见的并发症。每年大约有30万美国人死于与肥胖有关的疾病。美国约翰斯·霍普金斯大学研究人员2007年公布的调查报告称，如果美国人口的肥胖趋势得不到有效遏制，到2015年，肥胖将成为美国普遍现象。美国成年人将有75%超重，41%肥胖；24%的儿童和青少年都将超重或者肥胖。

专家们呼吁抵制垃圾食品（junk food），改变不健康的饮食与运动习惯，加强体育锻炼，控制体重，增进健康。

III. Notes to the Text

1. poulet de Bresse en deuil—布雷斯松鸡（一种法国特色美食）

2. millions of people have been gorging themselves on vast helpings of fast food—数百万人拼命大吃快餐（①gorge oneself on sth—to eat a lot of sth; ②helping—an amount of food given to so far a meal）

3. Greg Critser, author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World—格莱格·克里瑟，撰写了《肥胖之国：美国人是怎样变成世界上最胖的人》（①Greg Critser—a journalist who writes for USA Today, including cover stories dealing with medical, health and nutrition topics; ②Fat Land—It is published by Houghton Mifflin in January, 2003. In this book, Greg Critser deals with every aspect of American life—class, politics, culture, and economics—to show how Americans have made themselves the second fattest people on the planet after South Sea Islanders.）

4. It may also help to explain why the magician David Blaine, suspended without food in a Perspex box beside Tower Bridge, has such a grip on people's imaginations.—这也许有助于解释为什么吊在塔桥旁有机玻璃箱里绝食的魔术师大卫·布莱恩引起了人们极大的关注。（①David Blaine—born April 4, 1973, an American magician, endurance artist and Guinness Book of Records world record-holder. He made his name as a performer of street and close-up magic. ②Tower Bridge—a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, England, over the River Thames. It is close to the Tower of London, which gives it its name. It has become an iconic symbol of London. ③ has such a grip on people's imaginations—is so interesting that people give it a lot of attention）

5. In an astonishingly short period of time, starvation has metamorphosed from a threat to a spectacle, and families are turning out en masse at weekends to see how his hunger strike is going.—在极短的时间里，饥饿已经从生命威胁变成为观赏奇观，很多人都是一家人周末来看他的绝食进展情况。[① metamorphose—formal to change into sth completely different; ②en masse—(from French) altogether, and usually in large numbers]

6. Perhaps this is the point, that there are so few starving Americans in the world, which makes his self-imposed ordeal appear ludicrously self-indulgent.—也许问题在于，现今世界美国人中挨饿的很少，使得他强加给自己的饥饿苦难显得自我放纵荒唐可笑。

7. Yet it is possible to take Critser's argument a stage further and suggest that millions of Americans are trapped between two industries, fast food and slimming, which enjoy a cosily symbiotic relationship.—然而可以将克里瑟的论说向前推进一步，说明：数百万的美国人已陷入两大产业，快餐业和减肥业，两者之间存在亲密的共生关系。（symbiotic relationship—the relation between two different living creatures that live close together and depend on each other）

8. fast food outlets—快餐店（outlet—a shop/store that sells goods）

9. a feeling of being stuffed to the gills—一种撑饱的感觉[①to the gills—informal completely full; ②stuff (oneself with)—to eat too much food]

10. Cooking has become a spectator sport—烹饪已经成为一种观赏性的活动（spectator sport—a sport that many people watch）

11. For many people, eating has become an addiction rather than a pleasure, and going on a diet merely replaces one morbid habit with another.—对许多人来说，吃不再是乐事而是成癖了，节食只是一种病态习性取代另一种病态习性。（①addiction—the condition of having a very strong desire for sth and being unable to stop taking it; ②morbid—having a strong interest in sth unpleasant）

12. Far from being an object of derision as his body enters ketosis, the state in which it starts to consume itself, he should logically be the envy of all those individuals who are endlessly trying Atkins and other fashionable diets.—从逻辑上说，当他体内酮体生成过多，身体进入自我消耗状态时，他根本不应该是人们嘲笑的对象，而应该是所有无休止试图通过阿特金斯节食法或其他时新节食法减肥者的羡慕对象。(Atkins diet—阿特金斯节食法，一种提倡以高蛋白、低碳水化合物的饮食来减肥的方法）

13. Kafka's hunger artist—卡夫卡的饥饿艺术家 [①Kafka—(1883-1924) one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century; ②hunger artist—a short story by Franz Kafka published in Die Neue Rundschau in 1922. The main character is an archetypical creation of Kafka, an individual marginalised and victimised by society at large.]

14. 5ft 5in and a paltry nine stone—身长5英尺5英寸，体重9英石（①paltry —too small in amounts; ②1 stone—6.35kg）

15. PLAIN FOOD MOVES UP A CLASS—清淡食物地位上升了一个阶层

16. Even macaroni cheese was too exotic for my parents, who tipped it into the bin when I came home from cookery class with a Pyrex dish full of overcooked pasta and melted cheddar.—即使干酪通心面对我父母而言味道太怪，每当我从烹饪班带回一玻璃盘煮过头的意大利细面和融化的切达干酪，他们都会把它倒进垃圾桶。（Pyrex dish—派莱克斯耐热玻璃盘）

17. saturated fat—饱和脂肪

18. In a curious reversal, plain food—simple grilled fish with a green salad, such as the wonderful meal I ate in Marbella in the summer—has become the province of the middle class.—现在情况奇怪地颠倒过来，清淡食物（像我夏季在Marbella吃的那顿美餐，简单的烤鱼加上绿色的凉拌菜），已经进入中产阶级的饮食范畴。（Marbella—位于西班牙南部的阳光海岸，是个著名的游艇港，四季皆宜的天气让这里成为全球富豪休闲、度假、展现惊人财力的地方。）

19. the effects of our eating habits—a slender elite, as millions of ordinary people pile on the pounds—suggest that class divisions are as deep as ever—我们饮食习惯所造成的结果——上层人士苗条起来，而数百万的普通人体重却在迅速增加——显示阶级的划分比以往更加分明（pile on—to increase quickly）

20. health farm—an establishment, usually in the country, where rich or fashionable people go when they want to lose weight

21. Waitrose—英国一家连锁超市

22. Gordon Brown's five economic tests—戈登·布朗的五个经济检验标准（①Gordon Brown—a British Labour politician and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; ②five economic tests—the criteria defined by the United Kingdom Government that are to be used to assess the UK's readiness to join the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union, and so adopt the euro as its official currency）

23. I suspect I won't be invited to any smart parties for weeks at the very least.—我料想至少几个星期我不会被邀请参加任何时髦社交聚会。（smart—connected with fashionable, rich persons）

24. we both came out somewhere on the M1—我们两人都有所表明对货币供应量的看法（①come out—to declare oneself in some way; ②M1—[经]货币供应量）

IV. Language Features

《泰晤士报》简介

《泰晤士报》（The Times）创刊于1785年1月1日，是世界上最早的报纸之一。该报原名为《世鉴日报》（Daily Universal Register）,1788年正式更名为《泰晤士报》（The Times）。

《泰晤士报》创办人兼总编是约翰·沃尔特（John Walter）。第一期只有4页，发行量1,000份。目前，该报每期通常48—52页，发行量在40万左右，售价30—35便士。

《泰晤士报》是英国历史最悠久、最有权威、消息灵通可靠、政治影响很大的报纸。在英国帝国主义“鼎盛”时期，该报的社论有时能够引起欧洲小国的阁潮。当时英国首相迪斯雷利（1804—1881）对其政治影响做过这样的描述：英国在各国首都有两名大使：一名是英国女皇派遣的；另一名是伦敦《泰晤士报》派遣的（指该报驻该国的首席记者）。《泰晤士报》自称，它的办报方针是：“独立地、客观地报道事实”。然而，200年的历史证明，该报是英国政府的喉舌，在重大国内外问题上反映统治集团的意图。该报自创刊后的很长时期中，一直控制在沃尔特家族手中。1908北岩爵士购得该报后，数次易主。1966年由加拿大财阀肯尼斯·汤姆斯（Kenneth Thomson）购得。1981年又由英国最大报阀美籍澳大利亚人罗伯特·默多克收购。

默多克购得《泰晤士报》后虽然一再声称不会干预该报编辑方针（editorial policies），但该报的风格和内容都出现了一些变化：报纸图片增多，人情味（human interest）新闻、犯罪内容报道比例明显增加。例如：1998年7月3日《泰晤士报》“国内消息版”（Home News）用了大幅彩色图片和40%篇幅刊登下列报道：“Billie-Jo Foster Father Jailed for Life; Liar, Wife-beater, Adulterer, and Killer; Streetwise Imp Who Turned into ‘a Real Young Lady'; Boy, 14, Guilty of Killing Friend in Ecstasy Prank”.

每期《泰晤士报》的首页上端以彩色照片和标题形式介绍当日趣闻，中部以大幅彩照和粗体标题介绍当日重要新闻并刊登文章前几段。首页左下脚是索引，介绍版面安排。其他篇幅刊登一些报道的前几个段落，末尾注明剩下部分所在页码。此外，每期还有“今日要闻页”（The Times Today），这一页一般是在26页或28页。浏览首页和要闻页便可了解一期报纸的主要内容。

《泰晤士报》主要有如下版面：国内新闻（Home News），国外新闻（Overseas News），商业（Business），运动（Sport），读者来信（Letters），艺术（Arts），评论（Comment），舆论（Opinion），服饰（Style），教育（Education），司法与社会（Court & Social）。

该报主要读者是政府官员、议员、企业界和上层知识界。

V. Analysis of Content

1. The word “station”in the sentence “I was going to discuss ‘eating about your station'”(Para.7) means___.

A. a place for a train to stop

B. a place where service is provided

C. social rank

D. position for doing something

2. The author believes that the relationship between fast food and slimming is___.

A. parallel

B. interdependent

C. interchangeable

D. non-existent

3. According to research done by a fast food chain, what customers cared about was___.

A. taste of the food

B. quality of the food

C. quantity of the food

D. time saved in eating

4. It can be seen from the article that middle-class people in the western society today prefer___.

A. fast food

B. self-cooked food

C. plain food

D. Chinese food

5. The reason why Pilates was nervous in asking the question was that___.

A. the question was about the author's private life

B. the question would sound silly to the author

C. the euro was topic avoided by British people

D. the euro was an exciting topic

VI. Questions on the Article

1. What did the author's American friend talk over the phone about?

2. What was the reason for Americans'overweight according to Greg Critser?

3. How did the British respond to David Blaine's starvation stunt? Why did they behave this way？

4. What is the impact of fast food on Mexicans?

5. How does fast food affect cooking?

6. What kind of diet are people in western societies trying in order to slim down?

7. What is the difference between the traditional working class diet and present-day working class diet?

8. What is the result of westerners'reversal of eating habits?

9. What is the author's attitude towards the use of the euro?

VII. Topics for Discussion

1. Is fast food solely to blame for westerners'obesity?

2. Is fast food a curse or a boon?