真题二：
Ban sugary drinks—
that will add fuel to the obesity war
A) On a train last Thursday, I sat opposite a man who was so fat he filled more than one seat. He was pale and disfigured and looked sick to death, which he probably was: obesity(肥胖症)leads to many nasty ways of dying. Looking around the carriage, I saw quite a few people like him, including a couple of fatty children with swollen cheeks pressing against their eyes. These people are part of what is without exaggeration an epidemic(流行病)of obesity.
B) But it is quite unnecessary: there is a simple idea—far from new—that could spare millions of such people a lifetime of chronic(长期的)ill health, and at the same time save the National Health Service (NHS) at least £14 billion a year in England and Wales. There would, you might think, be considerable public interest in it. This simple idea is that sugar is as good—or as bad—as poison and should be avoided. It is pure, white and deadly, as Professor John Yudkin described it 40 years ago in a revolutionary book of that name. The subtitle was How Sugar Is Killing Us.
C) In its countless hidden forms, in ready meals, junk food and sweet drinks, sugar leads to addiction(瘾),to hormonal upsets to the appetite, to metabolic(新陈代谢的)malfunctions and obesity and from there to type 2 diabetes(糖尿病)and its many horrible complications. If people really grasped that, they would try to kick the habit, particularly as Britain is the “fat man of Europe”. They might even feel driven to support government measures to prevent people from consuming this deadly stuff. Yet so far this idea has met little but resistance.
D) It is not difficult to imagine the vested interests(既得利益集团)lined up against any sugar control—all the food and drink manufactures, processors, promoters and retailers who make such easy pickings out of the magic powers of sugar. Then there are the liberals, with whom I would normally side, who protest that government regulation would be yet another instance of interference in our lives.
E) That is true, but people should realise that you cannot have a welfare state without a nanny state(保姆国家), to some degree. If we are all to be responsible for one another’s health insurance, through socialised medicine, then we are all closely involved in one another’s health, including everyone’s eating and drinking. That has already been admitted, finally, with smoking. But it has yet to be admitted with overeating, even though one in four adults in this country is obese and that number is predicted to double by the year 2050. Quite apart from anything else, obesity will cripple the NHS.
F) Recently, though, there have been signs that the medical establishment is trying to sound the alarm. Last month the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC) published a report saying that obesity is the greatest public health issue affecting the UK and urging government to do something.
G) The report offers 10 recommendations, of which the first is imposing a tax of 20 percent on sugary drinks for at least a year, on top of the existing 20 percent value-added tax. That at least would be an excellent start. The amounts of sugar in soft drinks are horrifying, and turn straight to fat. As Professor Terence Stephenson, head of the AMRC, has said，sugary soft drinks are “the ultimate bad food. You are just consuming neat sugar. Your body didn’t evolve to handle this kind of thing.”
H) Precisely. The risks of eating too much fat or salt (which are very different) pale into insignificance compared with the harm done by sugar. And it is everywhere.
I) It is difficult to buy anything in a supermarket, other than plain, unprepared meat, fish or vegetables, that doesn’t have a large amount of sugar in it. This has come about because the prevailing scientific views of the 1960s and 1970s ignored the evidence about sugar, and instead saw fat as the really serious risk, both to the heart and other organs, as well as the cause of obesity.
J) The fashion was to avoid fat. But finding that food with much its fat removed is not very appetising, food producers turned to sugar as a magic alternative flavour enhancer, often in the forms of syrups(糖浆)that had recently been developed from com, and put it generously into most prepared foods and soft drinks.
K) This stuff is not just fattening. It is addictive. It interferes with the body’s metabolism, possibly via the activity of an appetite-controlling hormone. There’s plenty of evidence for this, for those who will accept the truth.
L) Theoretically, people ought to make “healthy choices” and avoid overeating. But sugar additives are not easy to identify and are hard to avoid. So the snacking, over-drinking and over-eating that makes people fat is not really their own fault: obesity is in large part something that is being done to them. It should be stopped, or rather the government should stop it.
M) Going around my local supermarket, I am constantly astonished that it is still legal to sell all the poisons stacked high on the shelves. The problem is that they are worse than useless. They are poisonous. They are known to be addictive. They are known to make people obese. And giving small children sweet drinks or bottles of fake juice all day long is nothing less than child abuse.
N) Clearly, the sale of such stuff ought to be illegal. I hate to think of yet more government regulation. But a bit of tax on sweet soda and a little more health education, a bit of cooking in schools and banning vending machines(自动售货机)here and there—as suggested by the AMRC report—is not going to achieve very much. Labelling is quite inadequate. What is needed is legislation banning high levels of sugary syrups used in foods and drinks.
O) In June 2012, the then minister for public health said the government was not scared of the food industry and had not ruled out legislation, because of the costs of obesity to the NHS. However, nothing has happened yet. Why not have another Jammie Dodger biscuit and forget about it.
46. Avoiding over-consumption of sugar can improve people’s health as well as save medical expenses.
47. Laws should be passed to make it illegal to produce overly sweet foods or drinks.
48. Giving small children sweet juices to drink all the time is equal to child abuse.
49. Looking around, the author found obesity quite widespread.
50. The number of obese people is expected to increase quickly in the next few decades.
51. If people really understood the horrible consequences of sugary foods and drinks, they would support government measures against sugar consumption.
52. It would be a very good beginning to impose an additional tax on sugary drinks.
53. The government has not yet taken any action to regulate sugar consumption although it indicated its intention to do so some time ago.
54. Sugar is far more harmful to health than fat and salt.
55. Consumers of sweet foods arc not really to blame because they cannot tell what food is sugary.
