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  3. When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed t

When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed t

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问题 When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.
Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies.
Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Mal-thusians(马尔萨斯主义者), who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quietly lately. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas.
As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the apocalypse(《启示录》)，but it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world’s biggest public-health issue today—the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principle risk factor in diabetes ; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organization labeled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast.
Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco? Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming and
new figures suggest that over the past year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century’s dining to excess. And everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That’s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them.
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答案 这个世界还不是很富裕的时候，富人胖穷人瘦，有识之士开始思考怎样喂饱穷人的肚子。现如今，世界的大多数地区，富人瘦而穷人胖，这些人又担忧起了肥胖问题。 对于这种现象，也许进化论难辞其咎，它让人类可以从容地应对贫乏，却在富足面前束手无策。人类已经习惯了在丰年储存能量，挨过荒年。可一旦荒年不再，人们囤积在肚子里的能量就再也甩不掉了。 由于生产力的发展，荒年在全世界出现的频率已经越来越小了。当代倡导马尔萨斯人口论的那些人曾描绘了世界很快将弹尽粮绝的画面，近几年这种言论也已经销声匿迹了。人类在驻足地球之后的大部分时间里都能打赢最困难的斗争，以保证自己和子孙后代不至于挨饿。但任何事情都有不利的一面，繁荣的背后也隐藏着危机，于是这就带来了许多政策上进退两难的窘境。 肥胖是现代社会的弊病，关乎形象问题。肥胖的人更容易使人联想到可爱的圣诞老人，而绝非世界末日的那四匹瘦马——战争、瘟疫、饥荒和死亡。但是我们也有理由说肥胖和它们一样严重，因为肥胖已经是威胁公众健康的头号问题，是心脏病的主要诱因，而因心脏病丧命的人数远远大于因艾滋病、疟疾和战争死亡的人数。它还是糖尿病、癌症以及许多其他疾病的主要诱因。自从2000年世界卫生组织宣布肥胖是一种“流行病”后，各种关于其弊端的报道就铺天盖地而来。 公众健康的警示和媒体压力一起，能劝导人们像远离烟草一样远离肥胖么?也许吧!在富裕的国家，健康食品销量大增，新的数据表明美国人在近年来减肥已略有成效，这还是史上第一次。不过，即使美国人瘦了那么几两，要解决半个多世纪过度肥胖而累积的健康问题，仍然任重而道远。与此同时，世界上其他地方的人们还在不断地堆积赘肉，这也是医生们建议政府敦促人们减肥的原因。
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