READING SKILLS TERM 2 – WEEK 7

Extra Reading 1
Read the text in one minute. Then cover it and tell your partner what you can
remember.
FOOD CULTURE SHOCK
A. Charles
You would think that eating with your fingers would be easy. In the US, there are only
certain things you can eat with your fingers, like burgers, for example, and that's easy
enough. When I went to South India, though, I realised that it is a whole new skill to
learn to eat rice and curry with your fingers. You have to mix the curries together and
with the rice and form a 'ball'. Dool* is particularly helpful as a kind of glue. You use
your fingertips, never the palm of your hand, and use your thumb to pop it into your
mouth. I thought I knew where my mouth was, but my first few attempts were a
disaster. There was food everywhere!
*Dool is a lentil curry widely eaten in the Indian subcontinent.
B. Alfredo
For me, when I travel, the 'fast food' culture always shocks me. I can't believe there
are people in the world who live on 'junk food' like burgers and just grab a sandwich
for lunch. Back home, food is very important to us. We cook fresh food for lunch and
dinner and sit down and eat as a family at least once a day, twice at weekends. A lot of
people grow their own vegetables and keep chickens. Food is part of your identity, so
what are you saying about yourself when you eat some rubbish which contains
chemicals and goodness knows what else? The worst thing I have seen on my travels
is a baby being given a fizzy drink in a bottle. That really shocked me!
C. Qiang Shi
I enjoy trying food from different countries, but what interests me more is the culture
and habits surrounding food and eating. In China, when we go to a restaurant with
colleagues, when we are offered something, we say 'No thanks', even though we want
it, because the person will definitely repeat the offer. In other countries, though, 'no'
means 'no', so if you are just trying to be polite and don't take it the first time, you will
end up with nothing! To me, it feels wrong to take something the first time it is
offered, so it took me a while to get used to that when I travel abroad.
D. Pauline
Being a vegetarian is so easy here in the UK that we forget that not everyone in the
world understands vegetarianism. For vegans the situation is even more difficult.
Probably the best place I've been to is India, as everything is divided into 'veg' or 'non
veg' so you know exactly what you're getting. In many countries, they don't even
realise that there is a concept of not eating meat for ethical reasons. In many parts of
the world, meat equates to prosperity, so the idea of going out for a meal and not
having meat is alien to them. I have travelled to places where, as a vegetarian, all I
have been able to eat is salad, fruit and chips. I'm glad to get home where we have
special vegetarian products.
E. Aileen
I think breakfast is the meal where food culture shock really hits you. In Australia,
there are certain foods you eat for breakfast and certain foods you don't. We usually
eat cereal or toast, maybe yoghurt and fruit. We would never eat chicken or
vegetables. But when I travelled in Asia, I realised that in many places, there is no
difference between breakfast and dinner: rice, curry, noodles, soup, steamed
vegetables and fish all appeared at breakfast. Even though I love all those things, I just
can't face them at breakfast!

Questions: (In the powerpoint):

1f 2d 3a 4e 5b 6c

1- repeat
2- identity
3- palm
4- prosperity
 5- Asia

Extra Reading 2
FOOD TV: EDUCATION OR ENTERTAINMENT
A. Shows about cookery have become more and more popular all over the world. But
what are the reasons for this, and does it make us cook more? In the UK, BBC
viewers complained to the programme Points of View that there were too many
cookery shows on TV. In one week, the BBC showed 21 hours of cookery. When
shows on other channels were included, this came to an amazing 434.5 hours of
food TV.
B. In the past, TV cookery shows were there to teach people how to cook. One of the
first famous TV cooks, Julia Child, was America. She began her career as a cook
when, in 1948, she moved to Paris and learnt to cook sophisticated French cuisine
because her husband loved good food. On her return home, she published a
collection of French recipes made simple, for ordinary American housewives to
use, which was an instant success. She was invited to do a TV show, where her
humour and strong personality soon won her great fame.
C. Nowadays TV chefs are famous for all sorts of different reasons. Gordon Ramsay,
for example, is an intersting TV chef. He is famous for having a bad temper and
using foul language. In his TV show, Hell's Kitchen, he shouts at his staff when
they make mistakes because he wants all the food at his restaurants to be perfect.
He has many restaurants in different countries. Jamie Oliver is
a good-looking, working-class boy who made healthy eating fashionable. He
believes children should eat healthy food and he worked with the government to
make school meals healthier. His style of cooking is quick, easy and fun.
D. There are some famous pairs of TV cooks as well. The Hairy Bikers are a pair of
chefs who have beards and ride motorbikes. They travel around to different places
and cook there. They were both fat but then did a series of shows on how to cook
diet food and both lost weight. Another famous pair was the Two Fat Ladies.
They didn't care about healthy eating. They also rode a motorbike.
E. The introduction of a competitive element to many cookery shows reminds us that
food TV is more entertainment than education these days. Many of us love shows
like Masterchef, wherre a contestant is eliminated on every show. The
personalities of both the contestants and the judges are far more important than the
cookery. In a popular competitive show called The Great British Bake-Off, there
was a “nice judge”, Mary Berry, and a “nasty judge”, Oaul Hollywood.
F. We know that cooking at home is better for us than eating ready-made or take
away meals. However, the fact that there is more cookery on TV doesn't
necessarily mean people cook more. Different studies have produced different
results, but most agree that people generally spend less time cooking than they did
in the past. Certain cookery shows influence viewers more than others. One study
found that the most influential show was Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals, which
influenced 21% of viewers. This may be because his method is to cook quick,
simple, healthy meals rather than 'restaurant-style' food.
G. It seems, though, that teaching children to cook at home and at school has much
more influence on healthy eating than watching TV programmes on cooking.
Grandparents have an important role to play because they may have more time -
and experience - than parents. Cooking with family members on a regular basis
and making food preparation part of the school curriculum is likely to ensure that
children become adults who can and do cook.
Questions 1-7
Which paragraph contain the following information. Write the correct letter, A-F.
NB You may use any letter more than ONCE.
1. The cooking show that affects people most
2. A TV chef who was first famous as an author
3. The number of food shows on TV
4. The role of cookery shows for enjoyment rather than learning
5. Why children should be taught to cook at school
6. Research about the amount of time people cook
7. Examples of famous cookery partners
1F 2B 3A 4E 5G 6F 7D = 5/7
Questions 8-14
Look at the following descriptions (1-7) and the list of famous chefs. Match each
description with the correct chef, A-F.
NB You may use any letter more than ONCE
8. Changed the style of cooking on some of their programmes - C
9. One of the first TV chefs - E
10. Helped to get children eating healthy food - B
11. The kinder of two judges - A
12. Cooked food that was not very good for you - F
13. Is very rude to the kitchen workers - D
14. Showed people that cooking foreign dishes need not be difficult - E
List of chefs
A. Mary Berry
B. Jamie Oliver
C. The Hairy Bikers
D. Gordon Ramsay
E. Julia Child
F. Two Fat Ladies
8C 9E 10B 11A 12F 13D 14E = 6/7
Extra Reading 3
Organic food: why?
Today, many governments are promoting organic or natural farming methods that
avoid use of pesticides and other artificial products. The aim is to show that they care
about the environment and about people's health. But is this the right approach?
A. Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, expanding by 25
percent a year over the past 10 years. So what is the attraction of organic food for
some people? The really important thing is that organic sounds more ‘natural’.
Eating organic is a way of defining oneself as natural, good, caring, different from
the junk-food-scoffing masses. As one journalist puts it: It feels closer to the
source, the beginning, the start of things.' The real desire is to be somehow close
to the soil, to Mother Nature.
B. Unlike conventional farming, the organic approach means farming with natural,
rather than man-made, fertilisers and pesticides. Techniques such as crop rotation
improve soil quality and help organic farmers compensate for the absence of man-
made chemicals. As a method of food production, organic is, however, inefficient
in its use of labour and land; there are severe limits to how much food can be
produced. Also, the environmental benefits of not using artificial fertiliser are tiny
compared with the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by transporting food (a great
deal of Britain’s organic produce is shipped in from other countries and
transported from shop to home by car).
C. Organic farming is often claimed to be safer than conventional farming - for the
environment and for consumers. Yet studies into organic farming worldwide
continue to reject this claim. An extensive review by the UK Food Standards
Agency found that there was no statistically significant difference between
organic and conventional crops. Even where results indicated there was evidence
of a difference, the reviewers found no sign that these differences would have any
noticeable effect on health.
D. The simplistic claim that organic food is more nutritious than conventional food
was always likely to be misleading. Food is a natural product, and the health value
of different foods will vary for a number of reasons, including freshness, the way
the food is cooked, the type of soil it is grown in, the amount of sunlight and rain
crops have received, and so on. Likewise, the flavour of a carrot has less to do
with whether it was fertilised with manure or something out of a plastic sack than
with the variety of carrot and how long ago it was dug up. The differences created
by these things are likely to be greater than any differences brought about by
using an organic or nonorganic system of production. Indeed, even some ‘organic’
farms are quite different from one another.
E. The notion that organic food is safer than ‘normal’ food is also contradicted by the
fact that many of our most common foods are full of natural toxins. Parsnips cause
blisters on the skin of agricultural workers. Toasting bread creates carcinogens. As
one research expert says: ‘People think that the more natural something is, the
better it is for them. That is simply not the case. In fact, it is the opposite that is
 true: the closer a plant is to its natural state, the more likely it is that it will poison
you. Naturally, many plants do not want to be eaten, so we have spent 10,000
years developing agriculture and breeding out harmful traits from crops.'
F. Yet educated Europeans are more scared of eating traces of a few, strictly
regulated, man-made chemicals than they are of eating the ones that nature created
directly. Surrounded by plentiful food, it’s not nature they worry about, but
technology. Our obsessions with the ethics and safety of what we eat - concerns
about antibiotics in animals, additives in food, GM crops and so on - are
symptomatic of a highly technological society that has little faith in its ability to
use this technology wisely. In this context, the less something is touched by the
human hand, the healthier people assume it must be.
G. Ultimately, the organic farming movement is an expensive luxury for shoppers in
well-manicured Europe. For developing parts of the world, it is irrelevant. To
European environmentalists, the fact that organic methods require more labour
and land than conventional ones to get the same yields is a good thing; to a farmer
in rural Africa, it is a disaster. Here, land tends to be so starved and crop yields so
low that there simply is not enough organic matter to put back into the soil.
Perhaps the focus should be on helping these countries to gain access to the most
advanced farming techniques, rather than going back to basics.
Questions 1-6
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Example: Paragraph A: viii
1. Paragraph B - v
2. Paragraph C - i
3. Paragraph D - iii
4. Paragraph E - ix
5. Paragraph F - vii
6. Paragraph G - iv
List of Headings
i. Research into whether organic food is better for us
 ii. Adding up the cost of organic food
iii. The factors that can affect food quality
iv. The rich and poor see things differently
v. A description of organic farming
vi. Testing the taste of organic food
vii. Fear of science has created the organic trend
viii. The main reason for the popularity of organic food
ix. The need to remove hidden dangers from food
Questions 7-8 – Par B, G
Choose TWO letters, A-E Questions 7-8
Which TWO of the following points does the writer mention in connection with
organic farming?
A. the occasional use of pesticides
B. using the same field for different crops
C. testing soil quality
D. reducing the number of farm workers
E. the production of greenhouse gases
Questions 9-10 – Par D
According to the writer, which TWO factors affect the nutritional content of food?
A. who prepares the food
B. the weather conditions during growth
C. where the food has been stored
D. when the plants were removed from the earth
E. the type of farm the food was grown on
Questions 11-12 – Par E, G
Which TWO negative aspects of organic farming does the writer mention?
A. Consumers complain about the extra cost.
B. Organic food may make people ill.
C. Farm workers have to be specially trained.
D. It requires too much technological expertise.
E. It is not possible in some countries.
7B 8E
9B 10D
11E 12E