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America’s New Dietary Advice Trying to get Americans

游客2023-12-11  24
问题                         America’s New Dietary Advice
    Trying to get Americans to eat a healthy diet is a frustrating business. Even the best-designed public-health campaigns cannot seem to compete with the tempting flavours of the snack-food and fast-food industries and their fat-and sugar-loaded products. The results are apparent on a walk down any American street—more than 60 % of Americans are overweight, and a full quarter of them are overweight to the point of obesity.
    Now, health advocates say, an ill-conceived redesign has taken one of the more successful publichealth campaigns—the Food Guide Pyramid—and rendered it confusing to the point of uselessness. Some of these critics worry that America’s Department of Agriculture caved in to pressure from parts of the food industry anxious to protect their products.
    The Food Guide Pyramid was a graphic which emphasizes that a healthy diet is built on a base of grains, vegetables and fruits, followed by ever-decreasing amounts of dairy products, meat, sweets and oils. The agriculture department launched the pyramid in 1992 to replace its previous programme, which was centred on the idea of four basic food groups. The " Basic Four" campaign showed a plate divided into quarters, and seemed to imply that meat and dairy products should make up half of a healthy diet, with grains, fruits and vegetables making up the other half. It was replaced only over the strenuous objections of the meat and dairy industries.
    The old pyramid was undoubtedly imperfect. It failed to distinguish between a doughnut and a whole-grain roll, or a hamburger and a skinless chicken breast, and it did not make clear exactly how much of each foodstuff to eat. It did, however, manage to convey the basic idea of proper proportions in an easily understandable way. The new pyramid, called "My Pyramid", has been simplified to a mere logo. The food groups are replaced with unlabelled, multicoloured vertical stripes. Anyone who wants to see how this translates into a healthy diet is invited to go to a website, put in their age, sex and activity level, and get a custom-designed pyramid, complete with healthy food choices and suggested portion sizes. This is fine for those who are motivated, but might prove too much effort for those who most need such information.
    Admittedly, the designers of the new pyramid had a tough job to do. They were supposed to condense the advice in the 84-page United States’ Dietary Guidelines into a simple, meaningful graphic suitable for printing on the back pf a cereal box. Nevertheless, many health advocates believe the new graphic is a missed opportunity. On the other hand, it is not clear how much good even the best graphic could do. Surveys found that 80% of Americans recognized the old Food Guide Pyramid—a big success in the world of public-health campaigns. Yet only 16% followed its advice. [br] The first paragraph is written to imply that______.
选项 A、it is difficult to change the eating habits of Americans
B、Americans do not place enough emphasis on health
C、America failed to carry out public-health campaigns
D、it is difficult to promote a healthy diet among Americans
答案 D
解析 本题考查写作目的。第一段首句开门见山地指出：让美国人吃健康饮食是一件很难的事情。第二句进一步解释原因：公共健康饮食运动无法与美食的诱惑相抗衡。第三句描述公共健康饮食运动很难开展的表现：美国人体重普遍超标。文章从第二段开始介绍膳食指南图表的发展及存在的问题。最后一段后半部分提到，即使最好的图表能发挥多大的作用也并不清楚，因为研究发现虽然大多数美国人认可了旧的膳食指南金字塔，即，公共健康运动取得了一大成功，但却只有16％的人真正听从它的建议。首尾段相呼应，作者认为在美国很难提倡健康饮食，因此有关膳食指南图表的争论也就显得无足轻重了。[D]是作者的真实写作意图。[A]、[B]只是部分事实，没有与下文的“膳食指南图表”联系起来。[C]中“未能成功”是结论性的话，作者不可能一开始就指出健康运动的失败。
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