首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Fixing a World That Fosters Obesity Environment forstering obesity Why are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple e
Fixing a World That Fosters Obesity Environment forstering obesity Why are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple e
admin
2013-04-08
27
问题
Fixing a World That Fosters Obesity
Environment forstering obesity
Why are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple explanation is that we eat too much junk food and spend too much time in front of screens—be they television, phone or computer—to burn off all those empty calories.
One handy prescription for healthier lives is behavior modification. If people only ate more fresh produce. If only children exercised more. Unfortunately, behavior changes won’t work on their own without huge societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger disease. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; much advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets) and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces. In other words, it’s the environment.
"Everyone knows that you shouldn’t eat junk food and you should exercise," says Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. "But the environment makes it so difficult that fewer people can do these things, and then you have a public health catastrophe." Dr. Brownell, who has a doctorate in psychology, is among a number of leading researchers who are proposing large-scale changes to food pricing, advertising and availability, all in the hope of creating an environment favorable to healthier diet and exercise choices. To that end, health researchers are grappling with how to fix systems that are the root causes of obesity, says Dee W. Edington, the director of the Health Management Research Center at the University of Michigan. "If you take a changed person and put them in the same environment, they are going to go back to the old behaviors," says Dr. Edington, who has a doctorate in physical education. "If you change the culture and the environment first, then you can go back into a healthy environment and, when you get change, it sticks. "
Indeed, despite individual efforts by some states to tax soda pop, promote farm stands, require healthier school lunches or order calorie information in chain restaurants, obesity rates in the United States are growing. An estimated 72. 5 million adults in the United States are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, about 27 percent of adults said they were obese, compared with about 20 percent in 2000, as reported in a C. D. C. study published this month. And, the report said, obesity may cost the medical system as much as $ 147 billion annually.
Equalizing food price
So what kind of changes might help nudge (促使) Americans into healthier routines? Equalizing food pricing, for one.
Fast-food restaurants can charge lower prices for value meals of hamburgers and French fries than for salad because the government subsidizes the corn and soybeans used for animal feed and vegetable oil, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We have made it more expensive to eat healthy in a very big way," says Dr. Popkin, who has a doctorate in agricultural economics and is the author of a book called The World Is Fat -. The Fads, Trends, Policies and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race.
The inflation-adjusted price of a McDonald’s quarter-pounder with cheese, for example, fell 5. 44 percent from 1990 to 2007, according to an article on the economics of child obesity published in the journal Health Affairs. But the inflation-adjusted price of fruit and vegetables, which are not subject to federal largess (赠与), rose 17 percent just from 1997 to 2003, the study said. Cutting agricultural subsidies would have a big impact on people’s eating habits, says Dr. Popkin. "If we cut the subsidy on whole milk and made it cheaper only to drink low-fat milk," he says, "people would switch to it and it would save a lot of calories."
Company keeping employees from obesity
Health experts are also looking to the private sector. On-site fitness centres and vending machines that sell good-for-you snacks are practical workplace innovations that many companies have instituted.
On a more philosophical level, innovative companies are training managers not to burn out employees by overworking them, says Dr. Edington of the University of Michigan. "Stress comes up. It can lead to overeating and obesity," Dr. Edington says. At companies that see employee health as a renewable resource, he adds, managers encourage employees to go home on time so they can spend more time with their families, communities or favorite activities. "Instead of going home with an empty tank, you can go home with the energy that we gave you by the way we run our business," he says.
Corporate-sector efforts aren’t entirely altruistic (无私心的). It’s less expensive for businesses to keep healthy workers healthy than to cover the medical costs of obesity and related problems like diabetes (糖尿病). For employees at IBM and their families, for example, the annual medical claim for an obese adult or child costs about double that of a non-obese adult or child, says Martin J. Sepulveda, IBM’s vice president for integrated health services.
IBM has been promoting wellness for employees since the 1980s. But in 2008, it began offering a new program, the Children’s Health Rebate, to encourage employees to increase their at-home family dinners, their servings of fruits and vegetables, and their physical activities, as well as to reduce their children’s television and computer time. In addition to helping prevent obesity in children, Mr. Sepulveda says, the program is aimed at employees who might neglect to exercise on their own but would willingly participate as part of a family project. Each family that completes the program receives $ 150.
Britain launching an attack concerning obesity
All of these ideas sound promising. But the architecture of obesity is so entrenched (难以更改的) that policy makers, companies, communities, families and individuals will need to undertake a variety of efforts to displace and replace it, says Alan Lyles, a professor at the School of Health and Human Services at the University of Baltimore.
And American efforts can seem piecemeal compared with those in Britain, where the government has undertaken an allround national attack, requiring changes in schools, health services and the food industry. Britain now places restrictions on advertising fatty, sugary and salty foods during children’s shows, for example. And by 2011, cooking classes will be mandatory (强制性的) for all 11- to 14-year-old students in the nation. The hope is to teach a generation of children who grew up on prepared foods how to cook healthy meals, and perhaps to make eating at home—instead of at the local fried fish-and-chips shop—the default option.
In Britain, by 2011, it will be compulsory for 11- to 14-year-old students to attend______.
选项
答案
cooking classes
解析
同义转述题。定位句中提到,到2011年,英国11岁到14岁的学生都被要求上烹饪课,故此处应填入cooking classes。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/AKr7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Theterm"qualityoflife"isdifficulttodefine.It【C1】______averywidescopesuchaslivingenvironment,health,employment,
Anadultgiraffe’sheadisaboutsixfeetaboveitsheart.Thismeansthatto【C1】______enoughblooduptothebrainthecircul
Anadultgiraffe’sheadisaboutsixfeetaboveitsheart.Thismeansthatto【C1】______enoughblooduptothebrainthecircul
Anadultgiraffe’sheadisaboutsixfeetaboveitsheart.Thismeansthatto【C1】______enoughblooduptothebrainthecircul
Onthenightoftheplay,Albertwasalreadymade-upand【B1】______inhispoliceman’suniformlongbeforetheendofthefirstac
Onthenightoftheplay,Albertwasalreadymade-upand【B1】______inhispoliceman’suniformlongbeforetheendofthefirstac
A、Seeifhequalifiesforastudentloan.B、Makeaproposaltothegovernment.C、Starttosaveuptopayforhiskidstogotos
A、Becauseeconomicsisasirregularasweather.B、Becauseeconomicsisasimportantasweathertoourdailylife.C、Becauseecon
Duringthe1992presidentialcampaign,HillaryRodhamClintonobserved,"Ourlivesareamixtureofdifferentroles.Mostofus
Workingrelationswithotherpeopleattheplaceofworkincluderelationshipswithfellowemployees,workersorcolleagues.Am
随机试题
A.相对生物利用度B.绝对生物利用度C.生物等效性D.肠一肝循环E.生物利用度药物被吸收进入血液循环的速度与程度是
个人的不良习惯最容易产生意外事故。
256×256形式表示的是
5岁患儿因吃不洁食物后突起高热、抽搐、昏迷收入院,确诊为中毒性细菌性痢疾,则其护理要点不包括
A市李某驾车送人前往B市,在B市甲区与乙区居民范某的车相撞,并将后者打伤。B市甲区公安分局决定扣留李某的汽车,对其拘留5日并处罚款300元。下列哪些选项是正确的?(2008年卷二第83题)
浅孔台阶爆破时,个别飞石对人员的安全距离为()m,复杂地形条件下为()m。
背景资料:某市财政拨款建设一综合性三甲医院,其中通风空调工程采用电子方式公开招标。外省施工单位在电子招标投标交易平台注册登记,但下载招标文件时,被告知外省施工单位需提前报名、审核通过后方可参与投标。最终该施工单位中标,签订了施工承包合同,采用固定总价合同
2014年2月春雪公司发生如下业务:(1)2月4日,向益述公司购买一批货物,向银行申请“现金银行汇票”用于结算货款。(2)2月8日,与标普公司签订一份彩电购销合同。该合同规定;由标普公司在10日内向乙公司提供彩电100台,共计货款25万
美术课时教案设计主要应包含下列哪些内容?()
Brushingremoveslargerparticles,butdentistssuggestbrushingthebackofthetongueaswell,wherefoodresiduesandbacteri
最新回复
(
0
)