What makes Americans spend nearly half their food dollars on meals away from home? The answer lies in the way Americans live tod

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问题     What makes Americans spend nearly half their food dollars on meals away from home? The answer lies in the way Americans live today. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, canned and other convenience foods freed the family cook from full-time duty at the kitchen range.
    Then, in the 1940s, work in the wartime defense plants took more women out of the home than ever before, setting the pattern of the working wife and mother.
    Today about half of the country’s married women are employed outside the home. But, unless family members pitch in with food preparation, women are not fully liberated from that chore.
    Instead, many have become, in a sense, prisoners of the completely cooked convenience meals. It is easier to pick up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home from work or take the family out for pizzas or burgers than to start opening cans or heating up frozen dinners after a long, hard day.
    Also, the rising divorce rate means that there are more single working parents with children to feed. And many young adults and elderly people, as well as unmarried and divorced mature people, have been alone rather than as part of a family unit and don’t want to bother cooking for one.
    Fast food is appealing because it is fast, it does not require any dressing up, it offers a "fun" break in the daily routine, and the expense of money seems small. It can be eaten in the car — sometimes picked up at a drive-in window without even getting out — or on the run. Even if it is brought home to eat, there will never be any dirty dishes to wash because of the handy disposable wrappings. Children, especially, love fast food because it is finger food, no struggling with knives and forks, no annoying instructions from adults about table manner.
The expression "pitch in with" in Paragraph 3 probably means______.

选项 A、complain
B、enjoy
C、help
D、deny

答案C

解析 词义理解题。第三段第二句指出,除非家庭成员……食物准备,否则,女性并没有完全从做饭中解放出来。由此可知,家庭成员帮忙准备食物才能将女性从做饭中解放出来。因此可推断,pitch in with在这里应指“帮忙,帮助”,故答案为[C]项。
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