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  3. A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food

A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food

admin2013-12-04  41
问题     A New website from the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA)shows that 10 percent of the country is now a "food desert." The Food Desert Locator is an online map highlighting thousands of areas where, the USDA says, low-income families have little or no access to healthy fresh food. First identified in Scotland in the 1990s, food deserts have come to symbolize urban decay. They suggest images of endless fast-food restaurants and convenience stores serving fatty, sugary junk food to overweight customers who have never tasted a Brussels sprout.
    Accordingly, Michelle Obama announced a $400m Healthy Food Financing Initiative last year with the aim of eliminating food deserts nationwide by 2017. Official figures for the number of people living in food deserts already show a decline, from 23.5m in 2009 to 13.5m at the launch of the website. Although this might on the face of it suggest that the initiative is off to a superb start, sadly it does not in fact represent a single additional banana bought or soda escaped. This is because in America, the definition of a food desert is any census area where at least 20 percent of inhabitants are below the poverty line and 33 percent live more than a mile from a supermarket. By simply extending the cutoff in rural areas to ten miles, the USDA managed to rescue 10m people from desert life.
    Some academics would go further, calling the appearance of many food deserts nothing but a mirage. Research by the Centre for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington found that only 15 percent of people shopped for food within their own census area. Critics also note that focusing on supermarkets means that the USDA ignores tens of thousands of larger and smaller retailers, farmers’ markets and roadside greengrocers, many of which are excellent sources of fresh food. Together, they account for more than half of the country’s trillion-dollar retail food market.
    A visit to Renton, a depressed suburb of Seattle, demonstrates the problem. The town sits directly in the middle of a USDA food desert stretching miles in every direction. Yet it is home to a roadside stand serving organic fruit and vegetables, a health-food shop packed with nutritious grains and a superstore that researchers found attracts flocks of shoppers from well outside the desert.
The author suggests that the drop from 23.5 million to 13.5 million______.
选项 A、represents substantial progress
B、is at least a good beginning
C、isn’t based on true information
D、doesn’t make much difference
答案D
解析 第二段的后半段说生活在食物沙漠中的人口数量从2 350万下降到1 350万，表面上看健康食物筹资计划有了一个成功的开端，但可惜的是这并不代表着多买了一根香蕉或少喝了一瓶苏打水。也就是说并不代表着多吃了健康食物，少吃了垃圾食品。数量的变化只是在于如何定义食物沙漠。在美国，如果一个人口普查区至少20％的居民生活在贫困线之下，33％的居民住宅距离超市一英里以上，它就可以被定义为食物沙漠。在农村地区把这条线定为离超市10英里以上，那么圈内的居民就不属于生活在食物沙漠，一下子就使生活在食物沙漠中的人口数量减少1 0
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