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Food Doesn’t Have to Wear Makeup

游客2024-03-07  32
问题                                                 Food Doesn’t Have to Wear Makeup
    A) I have eaten fries of a famous chain restaurant both in Britain and the U.S. Surprisingly, I found that the fries I had in Britain have four ingredients: potatoes, vegetable oil, dextrose (葡萄糖), and salt; however, the fries offered by the same chain restaurant in the U.S. had 19 ingredients—including sodium acid pyrophosphate (酸式焦磷酸钠), which keeps the fries’ color from getting dull. In fact, many major food companies in the U.S. use artificial food dyes in America—while selling naturally colored or dye-free versions in Europe.
    B) Chemicals like Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, and Blue No. 1 make American food look better. These additives are the culinary (烹饪用的) equivalents of lipstick and mascara (睫毛膏) , and they are often made from the same pigments (色素). Making food pretty has become a trend in the U.S. but it’s not doing us any good: not only does it trick us into thinking some foods are healthier than they are, but the dyes themselves may be harmful. So why do we keep using these dyes when so many other countries manage without them?
    C) It wasn’t always this way. Until the mid-19th century, natural food dyes from plants, animals, and minerals were used to color food in the U.S. Things changed when companies discovered artificial dyes which were cheaper, brighter, and more stable than their natural counterparts. Artificial dyes made food look more attractive, which made them popular with consumers. Food was treated like a commodity, with market forces shaping what were most valued: cost, convenience, and appearance. For decades, there was little push to worry—as Europeans did—about what was actually in our food. We just wanted it to look good.
    D) The safety of artificial food coloring has been debated for decades. Animal studies have linked high doses of food dyes to organ damage, cancer, and birth defects. In humans, food dyes have been linked to behavioral problems in children. Most of the studies on the effects of food dyes in humans looked at children with behavioral problems like hyperactivity (多动) and ADHD (注意力不足过动症) , and found that food dyes made their symptoms worse. Two large studies funded by the British government tested healthy children and found that they, too, were adversely affected by food dyes. The most recent of these studies, published in the Lancet, evaluated six dyes, including Red No. 40 and Yellow No. 5, and concluded that artificial coloring was associated with increased hyperactivity in otherwise healthy children.
    E) After the Lancet study was published, some skeptics who had doubted parental claims that food dyes affected the behavior of healthy children admitted they might have been wrong. In 2010, the European Parliament passed a law requiring warning labels on products with any of the six tested food dyes, and banned the use of food dyes for infants and young children, effectively ridding much of the European food supply—which had low amounts of artificial food dyes to begin with—of artificial food coloring. The doses used for some of the kids in this study, 20 to 30 milligrams of artificial food coloring, were not as high as those typically ingested by American children—in fact, kids often consume far higher doses than what was found to be harmful in clinical trials.
    F) The Food and Drug Administration reacted differently to the same evidence. A 2011 FDA report stated that a causal relationship between dyes and hyperactivity was not conclusively established based on available research, though the report conceded that dyes made symptoms worse in children with ADHD and other behavioral problems. Since this report was published, evidence that food dyes cause problems has continued to mount.
    G) It is true that pulling conclusive, universal findings from scientific research is a difficult task. Sure, there may be evidence suggesting harm from food additives, but some of the research was performed in animals and may not apply to humans. More high-quality research is needed to determine what happens when healthy people ingest typical doses of common food additives. We still don’t understand exactly what could be causing the negative effects food coloring seems to have on kids with certain conditions. All of these warnings are important to recognize.
    H) But when it comes to food coloring, why should we have to prove just exactly how and why the substance causes a negative effect on the people who consume it before we can ban it? If this were a necessary or meaningful food ingredient in any way, sure, that would be a reasonable standard. But food coloring has no nutritional value. Why are we risking it?
    I) Most likely because it helps companies sell products. Pretty food pays off because aesthetics in food do matter. We have relied on visual cues for thousands of years to help us determine what is edible, nutritious, and safe to eat. Man has adapted to appreciate natural colors, including a variety of green, red, pink, orange, yellow, and purple produce. Colors signal that food is ripe or that it contains healthy compounds. Because of that evolutionary background, color is money for food manufacturers. Children are especially attracted to a variety of bright, vibrant colors and succumb to targeted marketing.
    J) Food aesthetics can also affect how we perceive taste. In one study, when subjects were given sugar water in different shades of red, they reported that the deep red drinks tasted sweeter than the light red ones. We’ve been primed to expect certain things from certain colors. Another study showed people had a harder time identifying drink flavors when the drinks didn’t have the expected colors (an orange-colored drink that was really cherry-flavored tasted like an orange). We expect what nature has taught us, and even though our food system has changed radically in the past several decades, our expectations have yet to catch up. Food companies can instead use this knowledge to trick us and make their processed products appear more delicious.
    K) The reason why food coloring is still allowed is wrapped up in the different approach takes to food regulation. A key element of the European Union’s public health protection policy is the "precautionary principle", under which credible evidence of danger to human health merits protective action despite scientific uncertainty. Unlike the EU, the U.S. government sets high standards for proof of harm before regulatory action is taken. In fact, the FDA’s "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS) designation, introduced in 1958, allows companies to evaluate their own substances and deem them acceptable themselves, after which the FDA can review the evaluation—if it wants to. While this makes sense for ingredients like salt and pepper, GRAS lets producers take new food additives to the market without even informing the FDA. Trans fat was classified as GRAS until the label was withdrawn in 2015.
    L) There must be things that can drive change in the U.S. For example, consumer demand. Parents and activists have been petitioning food companies to remove dyes for years, and some are obliging. Recently, several food producers agreed to remove artificial food coloring in all of their food products. We’re lucky to have producers take this action, but we shouldn’t have to wait for their benevolence (善行). [br] The European Parliament in 2010 regulated the use of some food dyes by law and achieved good results.
选项
答案 E
解析 题干意为，欧洲议会于2010年通过法律管控了一些食用色素的使用并取得良好效果。根据题干中的关键词European Parliament in 2010和by law，可定位到E段。该段第二句提到，2010年，欧洲议会通过一项法律，规定食品中如含有上述六种食物色素其中的任何一种，都必须贴上警示标签，并且禁止在婴幼儿食品中添加色素，这有效减少了欧洲食物供应中的人工色素。由此可知，题干是对原文的同义转述，故选E。
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