Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (35 minutes)
Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A),B) ,C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage:
Increasingly, over the past ten years, people—especially young people—have become aware of the need to change their eating habits, because much of the food they eat, particularly processed foods, is not good for health. Consequently,there has been a growing interest in natural foods: foods which do not contain chemical additives and which have not been affected by chemical fertilizers widely used in farming today.
Natural foods, for example, are vegetables, fruit and grain which have been grown in soil that is rich in organic matter.In simple terms, this means that the soil has been nourished by unused vegetable matter, which provides it with essential vitamins and minerals. This in itself is a natural process compared with the use of chemicals and fertilizers, the main purpose of which is to increase the amount but not the quality of foods grown in commercial farming areas.
Natural foods also include animals which have been allowed to feed and move freely in healthy pastures. Compare this with what happens in the mass productionof poultry: there are battery farms, for example, where thousands of chickens live crowded together in one building and are fed on food which is little better than rubbish. Chickens kept in this way are not only tasteless as food; but also produce eggs which lack important vitamins.
There are other aspects of healthy eating which are now receiving increasing attention from experts on diet. Take, for example, the question of sugar. This is actually a nonessential food! Although a natural alternative, such as honey, can be used to sweeten food if this necessary, we can in fact do without it. It is not that sugar is harmful in itself. But it does seem to be additive: the quantity we use has grown steadily over the last centuries and in Britain today each person consumes an average of 200 pounds a year! Yet all it does is provide us with energy, in the form of calories. There are no vitamins in it, no minerals and nofiber.
It is significant that nowadays fiber is considered to be an important part of a healthy diet. In white bread, for example ,the fiber has been removed. But it is present in unrefined flour and of course in vegetables. It is interesting to note that in countries where the national diet contains large quantities of unrefined flour and vegetables, certain diseases are comparatively rare. Hence the emphasis is placed on the eating of whole meal bread and more vegetables by modern experts on “healthy eating”.
21.Which statement best expresses the main idea of this article?
A) People should eat any food to keep themselves healthy and strong.
B) People should eat natural foods to keep themselves healthy and strong.
C) People should eat fiber foods to keep themselves healthy and strong.
D) People should eat vegetables to keep themselves healthy and strong.
22.“Particularly processed foods” means ____.
A) foods which are particularly processed by adding chemical additives
B) foods which are particularly made by commercial farms
C) foods which are specially produced by commercial factories
D) foods which are not specially made by adding anything
23.Natural foods means ____.
A) foods good for health
B) foods not good for health
C) foods such as vegetables, fruit and grain from rich organic matters soil
D) crops from rich organic matters soil and meats of animals from healthy pastures