专四专八考试

【单选题】When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.
Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones.But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies.
Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately.According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m 20 years later, even though the world’s population increased by 1.6 billion over the perioD、This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough to eat.But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas.
As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with FatherChristmas than with the four horses of the apocalypse.But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world’s biggest public-health issue today—the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days thanAIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organisation labelled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast.
Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming and new figures suggest that over the past yearAmericans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history.But even ifAmericans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century’s dining to excess.And, everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That’s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them.
There’s nothing radical about the idea that governments should intervene in the food business. They’ve been at it since 1202, when King John ofEngland first banned the adulteration of breaD、Governments and people seem to agree that ensuring the safety and stability of the food supply is part of the state’s joB、But obesity is a more complicated issue than food safety. It is not about ensuring that people don’t get poisoned; it is about changing their behaviour. Should governments be trying to do anything about it at all
There is a bad reason for doing something. The bad reason is that governments should help citizens look after themselves. People, the argument goes, are misled by their genes, which are constantly trying to pack away a few more calories just in case of a famine around the corner. Governments should help guide them towards better eating habits.But that argument is weaker in the case of food than it is for tobacco— nicotine is addictive, chocolate is not—and no better than it is in any other area where people have a choice of being sensible or silly. People are constantly torn by the battle between their better and worse selves. It’s up to them, not governments, to decide who should win.
What is the main subject of the passage
A、The consequence ofAmericans’ obesity.
B、Governments’ intervention in overweight.
C、People’s role in fighting against obesity.
网考网参考答案：D
网考网解析：
主旨题。本文开篇运用对比，指出现在生活条件普遍提高，穷人们解决了温饱问题，但人们却过于肥胖。接着简要分析了为什么现代人过度肥胖的原因，第三段是对前面观点的具体阐释。之后作者指出肥胖带来的问题：引发各种疾病，导致死亡。作者在第五段直指造成肥胖的直接原因：吃得过多。接着开始探讨解决方案，认为饮食习惯是个人的事情，如果一个人不顾后果地贪吃而发胖，那都是个人的选择，政府对此无权干涉。可见，全文都是围绕美国人的肥胖问题展开论述的，故[D]为文章主题。第四段提到了肥胖带来的后果，但这是文章部分细节内容，排除[A]；最后三段提及政府干预问题，但这是针对肥胖问题提到的解决方案，主旨还是肥胖，排除[B]；同理，[C]是末段提到解决方案时提到的内容，非主题，排除。 document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>