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  3. Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be,

Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be,

admin2012-10-20  33
问题     Once upon a time, you believed in the tooth fairy. You counted on the stability of housing prices and depended on bankers to be, well, dependable. And you figured that taking vitamins was good for you. Oh, it’s painful when another myth gets shattered. Recent research suggests that a daily multivitamin is a waste of money for most people—and there’s growing evidence that some other old standbys may even hurt your health.
    Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160,000 midlife women. The data showed that multivitamin-takers are no healthier than those who don’t pop the pills.
    Vitamin supplements came into vogue in the early 1900s, when it was difficult for most people to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Back then, vitamin-deficiency diseases weren’t unheard-of: the bowed legs and deformed ribs of rickets (caused by a severe shortage of vitamin D) or the skin problems. But these days, you’re extremely unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet. Most of us could do with a couple more daily servings of produce, but a multi doesn’t do a good job at substituting for those. Experts say multivitamins have maybe two dozen ingredients--but plants have hundreds of other useful compounds. If you just take a multivitamin, you’re missing lots of compounds that may be providing benefits.
    Another myth about vitamin is that vitamin C could prevent colds. Today, drugstores are full of vitamin C-based remedies. Studies say: Buyer, beware. Recently, researchers analyzed a raft of studies going back several decades and involving more than 11,000 subjects to arrive at a disappointing conclusion: Vitamin C didn’t ward off colds, except among marathoners, skiers, and soldiers on subarctic exercises.
    Then can the vitamin cut the length of colds? Yes and no. Taking the vitamin daily does seem to reduce the time you’ll spend sniffling--but not enough to notice. Adults typically have cold symptoms for 12 days a year; a daily pill could cut that to 11 days. Kids might go from 28 days of runny noses to 24 per year. The researchers conclude that minor reductions like these don’t justify the expense and bother of year-round pill-popping (taking C only after symptoms crop up doesn’t help).
    Some people would think that vitamin pills might not help you, but they can’t hurt either. However, a series of large-scale studies has turned this thinking on its head. Studies have raised concerns that taking high doses of folic acid could raise the risk of colon cancer. Still others suggest a connection between high doses of some vitamins and heart disease.
    Some expert says vitamins are safe when you get them in food, but in pill form, they can act more like a drug—with the potential for unexpected and sometimes dangerous effects.
The phrase "ward off’ in the fourth paragraph is closest in meaning to
选项 A、cure.
B、keep away.
C、worsen.
D、relieve.
答案B
解析 词义理解题。第4段指出很多人认为维生素C能预防感冒，但各种研究得出的结果令人失望：维生素片不能预防感冒。因此文中Ward off与B选项的意义最接近，故选B。
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