University of Arizona researcher Dr. William Rathji says that after a study based on looking into garbage cans, the average family wastes at least $150 per year in food.
"Homemakers go out of their way to save pennies at the store and then don't realize that waste of edible (可食用的) foods adds up much more at home," said Dr. Rathji. He was one of about 100 food experts who met in Boise for a conference on food waste and ways to prevent it.
American families throw out between 8% and 20% of edible food at a cost of $4.5 billion per year. That's almost as much as the federal government spends every year for food stamps and child nutrition programs.
He found that food items which are costly and in short supply tend to be wasted more. During the 1973 meat shortage, meat waste increased to 9%, compared with 3% in 1974 and 1975. Sugar and sugar products waste jumped to 19% in 1975, when sugar prices doubled from the previous year.
Dr. Rathji theorizes that high prices force consumers to experiment, sometimes buy in large quantities. In the case of meat, sometimes low-priced cuts for unappetizing varieties are purchased, consumers then tend to waste more.
His theory is that the more variety in food bought, the more wasted. Regular bread is wasted at about a 10% rate, but specialty breads and rolls are wasted at a 20% rate.
If people are eating the same thing every day, they learn how to manage it. But if you're trying to pull something out of the cookbook every night, that's bound to be some waste.
Another finding is that lower income families waste less food than middle and upper income families. And the study found that dog food, which accounts for 8% of a shopping cart, is rarely wasted. Fresh produce and frozen items are more likely to be wasted.
The study also showed people with the most knowledge of safe, edible food waste the least. Much food is tossed out because a homemaker suspects it is spoiled when it is not.
1、Large quantities of food are thrown out because a homemaker____.
A、thinks they are not delicious
B、 says they taste bitter and hot
C、thinks they smell bad
D、 suspects they are spoiled when they are not
2、American families throw out between____of edible food every year.
A、5%～8%
B、 8%～10%
C、 20%～28%
D、8%～20%
3、When sugar prices doubled, waste of sugar____.
A、went down
B、went up
C、stayed the same
D、was cut in half
4、Which of the following statements is true？____
A、American housewives are not good homemakers.
B、Upper-income families are more wasteful than lower-income ones.
C、American families throw away almost as much food as they consume.
D、Americans waste a great deal of dog food.
5、When do American families waste more food？____
A、When prices are high.
B、When food is scarce.
C、When they think it is spoiled.
D、All of the above.
Did Grandma seem forgetful at the holiday parties last month？ It could be time to put her on a diet. Sharply【C1】______calories(卡路里)improves memory in older adults,according to a new study.
Research on the benefits of an extremely low-calorie diet【C2】______back to the 1930s, when scientists found that rats lived【C3】______to twice as long when they ate less than control animals. And how about in human？ To fill that【C4】______, scientist Agnes and her colleagues at the University of Muenster【C5】______50 healthy elderly subjects. The【C6】______volunteer was 60 years old and overweight. The researchers【C7】______assigned the volunteers to one of three groups. Twenty people were instructed to reduce their daily calorie【C8】______by 30%, while still eating a【C9】______diet. Another 20 were told to keep their calorie intake the same but increase their【C10】______of unsaturated(不饱和的 )fatty acids. The【C11】______10 volunteers did not change their diets.
After 3 months, all of the volunteers【C12】______a memory test in which they were shown 15 words and asked how many they could remember after 30 minutes.【C13】______average,those in the calorie-restriction group showed a 20%【C14】______over their baseline memory scores taken before they started their diets. Subjects in the other two groups showed【C15】______or no improvement. "Our study【C16】______provides some of the first【C17】______on the impact of calorie restriction on memory in the elderly, but this study has to be【C18】______up now," Floel noted. Her team plans to【C19】______larger studies to determine exactly【C20】______calorie restriction enhances memory.
【C1】
A．reducing
B．declining
C．burning
D．increasing
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 flavors of the snack-food and fast-food industries and their fat-and sugar-laden 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 public-health 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 to pressure from parts of the food industry anxious to protect theft products.
The Food Guide Pyramid was a graphic which emphasizes that a healthy diet is built on a base of gains, 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 program, which was centered 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 haft 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", abandons the effort to provide this information. Instead, it has been simplified to a mere logo. The food groups are replaced with unlabelled, multi-colored vertical stripes which, in some versions, rise out of a cartoon jumble of foods that look like the aftermath of a riot at a grocery store. 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 free 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 of a cereal box. And they had to do this in the face of pressure from dozens of special interest groups—from the country's Potato Board, which thought potatoes would look nice in the picture, to the Almond Board of California, which felt the same way about almonds. Even the National Watermelon Promotion Board and the California Avocado Commission were eager to see their products recognized.
Nevertheless, many health advocates believe the new graphic is a missed opportunity. Although officials insist industry pressure had nothing to do with the eventual design, some critics suspect that political influence was at work. 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.
Trying to get Americans to eat a healthy diet is a frustrating business can be easily proved by the fact that
A．public-health campaigns cannot compete with tempting flavors.
B．snack-food and fast-food industries are flourishing in the US.
C．most food in America are profoundly rich in fat and sugar.
D．fat people account for a large proportion of American population.
