Transcript Is it sufficient to ensure a safe food supply?

Warm-up
Mini-news Reading
Text A
Text B
Warm-up
After a series of food scandals, are you worried
about the safety of the food you consume?
Which is more important, strengthening
legislative oversight or purchasing organic food
at a much higher price?
What should we do in order to avoid potential
threat from problematic foods?
Mini-News Reading
Key words & Expressions:
1. National Center for Food Safety Risk
Assessment 国家食品安全风险评估中心
2. outcry n. 高声叫喊；公开呼吁；强烈抗议
3. National Health and Family Planning
Commission 国家卫生和计划生育委员会
Mini-News Reading
Question:
Do you think the unification of
bottled water quality standards
is necessary and worthwhile?
Why / Why not?
Text A
News Listening
Comprehension of the Text
Summary of the Text
Chart-Filling
News Listening
1. marketing and advertising
2. colorful packaging and plastic toys
3. grazed on grass
4. documentary films
5. industrialized food system
6. manipulated in a laboratory
News Listening
7. developed signs of
8. chemical fertilizers
9. sprayed on fruits and vegetables
10. poisoning our water
11. local farmers
12. fresh vegetables and good food
Text Analysis
Directions: Read Text A and try to divide it into three
parts. Then summarize the main idea of each part.
Part 1 (para. 1-2): Legislation progress is of little help in securing
food safety, which mainly lies in unnourishing processed food.
Part 2 (para. 3-8): Various preservatives or manufacturing
aids in daily food have questionable effects on our health.
Part 3 (para. 9-10): We should reconsider our diet and
resist the alluring junk food so as to intake safe food.
Comprehension
Read paragraphs 1-2 and answer the following
questions.
1. What is the significance of the 2010 Food Safety
Modernization Act? Is it sufficient to ensure a safe
food supply?
2. What constitutes a more serious threat than
pathogens as far as food safety is concerned? Why?
Comprehension
1. What is the significance of the 2010 Food Safety
Modernization Act? Is it sufficient to ensure a safe
food supply?
The 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act is a victory for
those of us who want to eat our spinach salads and
cheeseburgers without the worry of ingesting deadly
foodborne bacteria. This long overdue legislation finally
gives the Food and Drug Administration, which
oversees about 80 percent of our food supply, authority
to help prevent outbreaks instead of just reacting to
them. But it isn’t sufficient to ensure a safe food supply
because this law barely scratches the surface.
Comprehension
2. What constitutes a more serious threat than
pathogens as far as food safety is concerned?
Why?
The big problem with our food supply isn’t
pathogens, it is processed food, which
constitutes a more serious threat. We’re being
killed not by E. coli, salmonella, or
campylobacter, but by the nutritionally hollow
contents of the bags, boxes, and fast-food
clamshells that have managed to pass as
nourishment in our society.
Comprehension
Read paragraphs 3-8 and answer the
following questions.
3. What changes has Americans’ diet
undergone over the last century?
4. Why does the author claim that FDA
lacks enough authority or political will
to ensure a safe food supply?
5. What is the factor most responsible
for the FDA’s lax oversight?
Comprehension
3. What changes has Americans’ diet
undergone over the last century?
Over the last century, Americans’ diet has
undergone unprecedented change. Some 70
percent of the calories Americans consume
now come from highly processed foods —
loaded up with salt, sugar, fat, strange
additives, and refined grains and bereft of
naturally occurring nutrients and antioxidants.
Comprehension
4. Why does the author claim that FDA lacks
enough authority or political will to ensure a safe
food supply?
FDA doesn’t have anywhere near the authority or
the political will it needs to ensure a safe food
supply because the agency has done nothing to
set controls on the massive quantities of sodium
going into processed food, especially restaurant
food, and still allows trans fat, an acknowledged
poison, into products. And its oversight of the
vast number of ingredients going into our food is
much less reassuring than we might hope.
Comprehension
5. What is the factor most responsible for
the FDA’s lax oversight?
A lot of the blame — and the potential to
change things — is in the hands of
Congress, which has not given the FDA
the authority or funding resources it really
needs for the monumental task of
overseeing our $1 trillion food supply.
Comprehension
Read paragraphs 9-10 and answer the
following questions.
6. What does the author suggest people
should do to eat healthy?
* Have you got some good ideas to keep fit
as far as food security is concerned?
Comprehension
6. What does the author suggest
people should do to eat healthy?
The author suggest people cut down
the space on our plates for processed
food as little as closer to 20 or 30
percent. It’s only then that we can call
our food supply truly safe.
Comprehension
* Have you got some good ideas
to keep fit as far as food security
is concerned?
(Open Question)
Summary
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
authorized
oversee
scratch the surface
hospitalization
foodborne
preventable
pathogens
loaded
9. ingredients
10. nourishment
11. substances
12. lax
13. clout
14. regulate
15. ubiquity
Chart-Filling
①2010 Food Safety Modernization Act
②prevent outbreaks instead of just
reacting to them
③secure food safety
④pathogens
⑤processed food
⑥step in with stronger regulation
⑦the intake of processed food
Text B
Comprehension
Read Text B and answer the following questions.

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1. Why are some people willing to pay up to twice as
much for goods with organic labels?
Can you describe the process of producing organic foods?
What is the commonly believed wisdom as far as organic
foods are concerned?
What is researchers’ attitude towards the difference
between organic foods and conventional varieties?
Do favor the idea that food should be produced with
fewer pesticides and more natural-growing practices?
Are you willing to pay a little more for organic foods in
the future?
Comprehension
1
Why are some people willing to pay up
to twice as much for goods with
organic labels?
Some people are willing to pay twice
as much because they believe that
organic food gets them a more
nutritious and safer product.
Comprehension
2
Can you describe the process of
producing organic foods?
Organic foods are grown without manmade pesticides or heavy reliance on
antibiotics and growth hormones to
boost yields; organic farmers also use
natural-based fertilizers, like manure, and
raise livestock in less-confined spaces.
Comprehension
3
What is the commonly believed
wisdom as far as organic foods are
concerned?
It is commonly believed that organic
foods have a lower risk of food-borne
illnesses, so they are more nutritious
or healthier than conventional foods.
Comprehension
4
What is researchers’ attitude towards the
difference between organic foods and
conventional varieties?
Researchers did find little difference in
nutritional content between the two
categories of foods, but these nutritional
differences were so small that researchers
were reluctant to make much of them until
further studies confirm the trends.
Comprehension
5 Do favor the idea that food should be
produced with fewer pesticides and
more natural-growing practices?
Open Question
Comprehension
6
Are you willing to pay a little more
for organic foods in the future?
Open Question
Translation
1. A study led by researchers at Stanford
University says that organic products aren’t
necessarily more nutritional than conventional
varieties, and they’re no less susceptible to
contamination from disease-causing microbes
like E. coli either. (para. 2)
斯坦福大学的研究人员声称有机食品在营养方面并
非一定超过传统品种。此外，有机食品也同样容易
受到类似于大肠杆菌之类的致病细菌的影响。
Translation
2. Organic produce also contained more total
phenols than conventional varieties; phenols
include flavonoids that work as antioxidants to
fight genetic damage that can lead to cancer
and even some neurological disorders like
Parkinson’s. (para. 8)
与传统品种相比，有机产品含有更多的石碳酸。作
为一种抗氧化剂，石碳酸内含有的类黄酮能够有效
抵抗基因损伤，防止癌变或者帕金森之类的神经障
碍症的发生。
Buzzwords