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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  95
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 word "mirage"(Para. 3)probably means______.
选项 A、unreal problem
B、potential risk
C、growing difficulty
D、hidden danger
答案A
解析 第三段第一句说有些学者又再进了一步，称很多食物沙漠其实只是海市蜃楼，并不是真实存在的问题。Mirage：something that appears to be real but isunreal or merely imagined。
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